


stirring the calm

by hardscrabble



Series: and my glance turns to a stare [2]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Developing Friendships, Multi, POV Otabek Altin, Siblings, music feelings, otabek altin is very opinionated
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-12
Updated: 2018-05-31
Packaged: 2019-05-05 13:54:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 30,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14620032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hardscrabble/pseuds/hardscrabble
Summary: Otabek's sister exacts a promise from him before the Grand Prix series begins: he's going to make a friend, at least one full-time competitive skating friend, this season. How hard could it be?Or: The Altin siblings shred Otabek's competitors and Otabek overthinks his way through his GP series. [Part of a series, but this portion can stand on its own.]





	1. out of reach and in the dark

[October 24, 2014, 21:45 CST, Hoffman Estates, IL, USA/October 25 08:45 ALMT, Almaty, Kazakhstan]  
**feruzaaa:** SMILE IDIOT U JUST ROCKED UR SP

[21:55 CST/08:55 ALMT]  
**otabek_a:** was I not smiling?  
**feruzaaa:** U FUCKR THAT WAS NOT A SMILE NTO EVN A LITTLE  
**otabek_a:** they weren’t asking me anything interesting.  
**feruzaaa:** UGH W/E rehearsal starts in 5 tell me sth important  
**otabek_a:** like what?  
**feruzaaa:** have u made a friend  
**otabek_a:** I have two more days.  
**feruzaaa:** ill take that as a no

***

Otabek Altin has one thing in common with his younger sister Feruza, aside from superficial genetically determined things like dark hair and eyebrow shape: when they have opinions, they hold them _strongly_. Of course, their modes of expression differ, which is to say that Feruza adores voicing, questioning, analyzing, defending, and comparing hers with anyone willing to engage, while Otabek…refrains. From expression in general.

Feruza is Otabek’s exception. She knows all his likes and dislikes, favorite colors and least favorite foods that he’ll still eat on sufferance, and has listened to him expound on the pros and cons of music editing programs, new albums, old albums, his own performances, other skaters’ performances, and the relative attractiveness of girls, boys, and assorted others in his life. She considers this a privilege, apparently. When Otabek takes bronze at Worlds in 2014 out of essentially nowhere, their months-long celebratory high includes a great deal of Feruza hugging herself (or him, when she’s not at school Skyping him) and muttering, “I am the worldwide expert on the third-best men’s singles figure skater on this _planet_.”

“The third-best men’s skater who happened to perform that day. On this planet,” corrects Otabek.

“One day you’re going to be enthusiastic about something and you won’t even _realize it._ ”

He supposes that they have one other similarity, in addition to hair color, Power Brows (Feruza’s term, developed when she is thirteen), and the intensity of their convictions. She is also uncommonly talented in a skill that requires unholy determination and training to build a life around, with a vanishingly small proportion of “career” success stories. Her poison is instrumental musical performance: piano as soon as she was literate, violin at the age of six, enrolling in boarding school for musically talented children before she turned seven, and, most recently, beginning her second of four years of study at the national conservatory in Almaty. She turns fifteen in mid-June, while Otabek and his coach Karim Sarper are still creating the bones of his programs for the 2014-’15 season.

He admits privately—because Feruza would _never_ let it go—that he came back to Almaty, finessing a transcontinental move in the middle of his first season in seniors (it helped that Karim’s fiancée had just accepted a position in Bishkek), because he’d realized he’d gone eight years with fewer than six weeks a year in the same town as his sister.

Their mother and father are happy that they can help to finance their children’s wanderings across the globe—Feruza’s first international journey for the sake of music was two weeks in the northeastern US at the age of ten, a full year before Otabek spent a summer in St. Petersburg—and have never been anything less than supportive. However, both are highly practical people in careers that are demanding, but _stable_ : their mother does something inexplicable but important in international finance, and their father is a pediatric surgeon. Otabek was about seven when he first noticed, in the midst of his own fierce pride for his sister, the looks they traded while applauding one of Feruza’s first piano recitals: _we cherish our delightfully talented children and will nurture them and their skills to the best of our abilities and resources, but we have_ no _idea where this came from._

But the actual point stands. Other than dedicating huge portions of their lives to impractical things and feeling really strongly about those things and anything else they care enough to have opinions about, they’re basically night and day.

Otabek has a double handful of friends in Almaty. They were the kids he’d learned to skate with up until he left for St. Petersburg and then Ufa; now, they’re a loose, mixed network of people between 14 and 22. Feruza, meanwhile, is friends, or at least friendly, with _everyone_ at the conservatory, plus she’s on coffee-meetup terms with half the professional musicians in the city. And that’s not to mention the clusters of Twitter friends and Instagram buddies in cities on every continent but Antarctica—and that’s going to change if the sort of freakish 23-year-old astrophysicist-cellist manages to snag an Amundsen–Scott internship—from camps, training programs, festivals, tours, and one-off performances. She makes friends as easily as she breathes, and she seems to consider it just as necessary.

For both of them.

***

She corners him while she’s home two weekends before he heads to Illinois for Skate America, his first GP qualifier. “Look, you’re doing this for your _life_ , or for the next decade at least,” she says. “You’ve _got_ to have some skating friends. Who do you talk to at the parties?”

“I skip the parties.”

“What do you do at competitions? I mean, when you’re not at the rink?”

“Read.”

She is aghast. “You go all over the world and you read in hotels alone? _Why?_ ”

“I like reading. Oh,” he adds. “Sometimes I plan bike trips.”

 “Promise me you’ll make a skating friend, Otash.”

“Is it that big of a deal?”

“I think so,” she says, very seriously. “You’re turning eighteen in less than a month, so you’ll be legal for almost everything almost everywhere, and you _go_ everywhere, and I just—I mean, I worry about you. It sucks to be alone.”

It kind of does suck, he thinks, reflecting on his most recent scroll through his Instagram feed, which shows so many skaters he’s competed against hanging out with each other. The Almaty rink crew is great, but they all gradually dropped competitive skating after Otabek started chasing it around the world. He doesn’t really have people to talk shop with—Karim doesn’t count. He’s not sure if it feels lonely, precisely, but it does get old, only talking to himself. Although he personally finds himself to be excellent company.

“On the Mahler tour, like, there was the entire symphony, and then there was me and the soprano, and I don’t know, they were all like a decade older and they all had their cliques—I mean, woodwinds, that’s normal, but it was _everyone_. And Lyazzat and I got along, just because we were the only freaking fourteen-year-olds _there_ , but I couldn’t just _talk_ to anyone or bitch about the crap cell coverage or freak out about cute Instagram dogs, and it was only four weekend trips, but I felt so…” Feruza’s face twists in an out-of-place expression: helplessness. “So isolated. And it made me worry about you.”

So Otabek says, “Okay. I’ll make a skating friend.”

She lights up. “Really?”

“So you don’t worry. Sure.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

“Good. I’ll ask, you know.” Feruza half-asses things exactly never.

“I count on it.”

The last time he sees Feruza before he heads to the airport for Skate America, she hugs him fiercely and whispers, “ _You’re making a friend this year_.”

“I know.”

***

[October 25, 2014, 22:37 CST/October 26 09:37 ALMT]

 **feruzaaa:** U KILLED IT omg the 4th year opera guy ismail is crying I think he has a crush hes just repeating “it had to be the 2nd it had to be the 2nd” bitcj were u gonna use the finale??? of BEETHOVEN 9?????  
**feruzaaa:** HAVE U MADE A FRIEND

[00:37 CST/11:37 ALMT]  
**otabek_a:** is ismail cute?  
**feruzaaa:** CHECK OUT UR PRIORITIES  
**feruzaaa:** GOIN ROGUE idk who even likes boys  
**otabek_a:** both of us, last I knew.  
**feruzaaa:** RHETORICAL Q. SILVERRRRRRRRRRR  
**otabek_a:** yes! I’m very pleased.  
**otabek_a:** phichit should have placed above guanghong though.  
**otabek_a:** it’s guanghong’s senior debut and it’s nice he placed, but he really lucked out. phichit had an off day.  
**feruzaaa:** OMG  
**feruzaaa:** HAVE YOU MADE A FRIEND, MY TALENTED BROTHER  
**feruzaaa:** YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT YOUR COMPETITORS AS IF THEY ARE FELLOW HUMANS  
**feruzaaa:** GIVEN NAMES, MY GOODNESS  
**otabek_a:** I shook everyone’s hand. does that count?  
**feruzaaa:** ughhhhhhhhhhh I despair entirely  
**otabek_a:** there’s still the banquet tomorrow.  
**otabek_a:** or today?  
**otabek_a:** what time is it?  
**feruzaaa:** youhave a PHONE jfgi  
**feruzaaa:** o can u get leo’s # for me? he’s a qt  
**otabek_a:** oh it’s not even lunch for you.  
**otabek_a:** I suppose I could, but I think leo and guanghong might be a thing?  
**feruzaaa:** omg nvm I would never interfere w/ young love  
**otabek_a:** I note only that both are older than you. by years.  
**feruzaaa:** “young” describing their relationship, if they’re not being obvious enough 4 u 2 tell  
**feruzaaa:** not the people IN the relationship  
**feruzaaa:** lateral thinking, my favorite brother

***

In the gala performance the next day, he skates his short program from his previous year, the one that won the bronze at Worlds. Better costume this time (for him, this means “simpler;” he can hear Feruza complaining from across the planet), slightly different arrangement, one triple traded for a quad because he can, but he still feels a little like he’s sleepwalking.

However, it’s still far too early for his secret project—the one only Karim knows about so far, and that only because he’d caught a page of Otabek’s notebook when he was brainstorming music choices—to see the light of day. It’s his baby. His weird, completely out-of-character baby—at least, out of character for the Hero of Kazakhstan. It’s fully in _his_ character, but that’s not the one the world wants to see, at least until his secret skate is as perfect and ridiculous as he can make it, and until he’s gotten enough medals to earn a personality.

The sleepwalking feeling continues through the banquet, which he actually attends—he packed a suit; might as well wear it. There’s decent finger food, despite the training-season restrictions, and enough fancy fizzy waters with garnishes— _garnished water_ —for all the European under-21s to feel like they aren’t being ignored.

Otabek talks to a few pairs skaters and succumbs with no protest whatsoever to a brief ambush by a French ladies’ singles skater who’s apparently just had her birthday. She’s claiming presents of (well-concealed out-of-sight) kisses from every handsome boy in the room who isn’t actually holding hands with a man. He’s not sure if all of those present-kisses are as vigorous as the several she exacts from him, but he’s certainly not complaining, he thinks, as he straightens his jacket. He wipes his mouth on the back of his tie to erase traces of her transferred fuchsia lip color, using his phone’s camera as a mirror.

[October 26, 2014, 19:04 CST/October 27 07:04 ALMT]  
**otabek_a:** I don’t suppose endorphin-fueled birthday making out counts as making friends.  
**feruzaaa:** thx for the weirdest early morning text ever  
**otabek_a:** forgot—sorry.  
**feruzaaa:** their birthday?  
**feruzaaa:** …did you get their number?  
**otabek_a:** her birthday, not mine. early for me, right? didn’t even think to ask about numbers.  
**feruzaaa:** ur past tense suggests it is a moot point. but ur at the banquet???  
**otabek_a:** yeah.  
**feruzaaa:** then PUT UR PHONE AWAY, stop hiding in whatever corner ur in  & get back out there

First, he finds the French skater’s Instagram account and follows it—she probably won’t notice among her fifty thousand-odd followers, but whatever, it feels polite, or something. Then he wades back into the fray.

His actual competitors are divided into three groups. Phichit Chulanont is taking group selfies with Leo de la Iglesia and Guanghong Ji, who are holding hands like they’ve just invented the concept. Meanwhile, Fritz Lehmann and Antoine Maes—fifth and sixth, with scant hope of qualifying—are sitting together in a corner with mixed drinks, both looking miserable. They’d shown clear talent: flair, expression, flexibility, the stuff Otabek is bad at and doesn’t try to pretend otherwise, but they’d flubbed their technical components. The other six, almost definitely out of the running, are scattered throughout the hotel ballroom, most looking like they’re happily celebrating the end of this particular bullshit—they’ll each have another GP qualifier, but they’re all focusing on other series.

And then there’s Otabek. He heads toward the corner with the sad German and the sad Belgian, attempting to look casual. What does “casual” look like when it’s wearing a suit, not sneaking into an 18+ party in Detroit or DJing an under-18 club night in Montreal?

Lehmann nudges Maes as he approaches. “ _Noblisse oblige_ ,” he says. Slurs. His accent is bad.

Maes grunts and tosses half the contents of his highball glass down his throat.

Unpromising. Otabek changes tactics; his hands are already in his trouser pockets, so he puts on a concerned expression—probably over-acted, but it seems like they might be drunk enough not to catch it. As he gets closer, he looks at the floor, checking the walls, the table with an overly exuberant floral display, the carpet under their chairs. Pulls empty hands out of his pockets—because he’s smart and put his phone and key card in his jacket—and frowns. “Could have sworn,” he mutters in English, before looking up. “Lehmann, Maes, sorry I’m interrupting—have you seen a billfold around here? Ratty brown leather?”

They both shake their heads. “Lost it, huh,” says Maes, matching him in English, and he sounds both drunker and meaner than Lehmann. “Skating’s one thing, but get you in the real world—”

Lehmann straight-up elbows him in the ribs. “Hey. Not his fault we fucked it up.” He meets Otabek’s eyes and says, “Haven’t seen it. Brown leather? I’ll keep an eye out.”

“Thanks. Safe travels, both of you—see you.” He hightails it, keeping up the totally-looking-for-a-nonexistent-wallet— _brown_ leather? He’d _never_ —act until a group of ice dancers blocks the two of them from view.

Phichit Chulanont is taking more photos—not selfies—and Leo and Guanghong are practically clinging to each other. Either they’ve forgotten they both train in Detroit these days, or this really is a new thing for them. Phichit looks up between shots (he’s got his phone aimed at his own coach, this perma-tanned Italian guy, who is flirting heavily with one of the older ice dancers) and sees him. “Otabek!” he says, breaking into one of those beaming smiles like he actually thinks that you, personally, are his sunshine. “Your exhibition skate was great!”

“Oh, thanks,” Otabek says, a bit off-balance. “You’re at—which is it, China?”

“With these two, yes!” Phichit gestures at the medalists, who are sharing one entirely insufficient hotel-ballroom stacking chair. “My sweet infants. We all trained together for the last three years, I just headed back to Bangkok…”

“I’m not an _infant_ ,” Guanghong protests. “Just because this was my debut—”

“He doesn’t mean it,” says Leo. “It’s an affection thing. Skate dad. He likes adopting us urchins.”

“I’m not an urchin, either!”

“Could have fooled me.” Leo ruffles Guanghong’s hair, which Guanghong endures manfully. Teenfully. “Otabek, a pleasure,” he adds, and holds out the non-ruffling hand. “You’re at NHK, yeah? See you at the final.” Just after Otabek shakes his hand, he makes a fist and raps it against his own head. “Knock on wood.” He actually winks.

Guanghong holds out his own hand. “It was so cool sharing the ice with you,” he says, so earnestly it almost hurts Otabek’s heart. “I mean, bronze at Worlds—I’ll catch up with you, though.”

And Phichit is last. “Your programs are fantastic!” he says. Everything out of his mouth seems to feature an exclamation point. “Be seeing you! Oh, wait—can I get—”

Phichit’s arm is around his neck and a phone is in front of his face, showing Otabek’s default non-expression next to Phichit’s ridiculous megawatt smile. He manages to quirk one side of his mouth upward just before the phone makes its fake shutter noise. “There we go! You’re on Insta, right? I can tag you?”

“Um, my account is private—”

“Can I follow you?” Guanghong interrupts.

“Me too!” says Leo.

They have a millennial moment as he accepts their follow requests and, to be on the safe side, follows all three of them back. His timeline updates.

 **phichit+chu:** _silver medalist @otabek-altin!!! expect great things!!!_ and a jumble of hashtags and emoji, including the Kazakh and Thai flags.

He looks like a tool.

“Perfect photo,” says Guanghong. “Bye, Otabek! See you!”

Otabek can’t tell if they realize they’ve been telling him that they’re done with the conversation nearly since it began, but he leaves the ballroom shortly afterward anyway, because fuck it, he tried, and he’s got an unopened hardcover of _Station Eleven_ waiting for him in his room.

His phone buzzes while he’s in the elevator.

[21:17 CST/October 27 08:17 ALMT]

 **feruzaaa:** BANQUET PHOTO???????  
**otabek_a:** do I look like a tool? I think I look like a tool.  
**feruzaaa:** that’s just ur face  
**otabek_a:** wow.  
**feruzaaa:** im jk you look good! you look like you. but  
**feruzaaa:** BUT:  
**feruzaaa:** FRIEND?????  
**otabek_a:** uh. don’t think so.  
**feruzaaa:** but phichit chulanont tagged you!!!  
**otabek_a:** sure, but that seemed reflexive. he, leo, and guanghong are all buddies already. they weren’t being mean, it was just clear they… I don’t know, didn’t have room for me.  
**feruzaaa:** ah. like flutists.  
**otabek_a:** and lehmann  & maes clearly just want to leave.  
**feruzaaa:** dw, rest of the season to go  >:)  
**otabek_a:** sure. flight in the morning—I’m going to read and crash. much love.

He sets his phone to silent before he changes out of his suit. As he hangs it up and drags on a pair of sweats, he’s not sure why he feels so weird; being alone in his hotel room is his competition norm. Possibly the attempt at socializing just highlighted the—okay, the _loneliness_ of heading to his hotel room for a hot date with a book while his cohort parties downstairs. This is what he gets for trying new things. Only for Feruza, he thinks, and gets under the bleach-smelling hotel duvet.

Five floors away from the banquet, the superflu plague knocking out the vast majority of the Earth’s population seems tonally appropriate.


	2. step away, look around

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Altin siblings watch Skate Canada and the Cup of China. There's a lot of music geeking.

[November 4, 2014, 19:05, ALMT, Almaty, Kazakhstan]

 **otabek_a:** sorry, just wrapped up. are you still available to watch Skate Canada?  
**feruzaaa:** YES there in 40  
**feruzaaa:** ish

Feruza’s weeknights are all kinds of variable, depending on her classes and rehearsal schedule, but they’ve lucked out this season. Her quartet established group practices on Thursday evenings, her own instructor claims Mondays and Wednesdays, and the symphony’s Tuesday rehearsals are always finished by early evening. So each Tuesday after the Grand Prix qualifiers where Otabek himself isn’t competing, Feruza has time to come to Otabek’s flat to watch a stream of the previous weekend’s event. Sure, he’d just seen Feruza at their parents’ on his birthday a few days ago, but this ritual—can you call it a ritual if you’re only _planning_ to do it multiple times?—is _theirs_.

He showers and is halfway through his season-diet pasta-based dinner when his phone buzzes and the doorbell rings, simultaneously. “Coming,” he says loudly.

“That’s what she said,” replies his sister, voice muffled through the apartment door.

He can’t keep a grin off his face as he goes to open the door, holding his plate. “Feru—”

“She was lying,” Feruza continues, and grins back at him while she kicks off her ankle boots.

They settle on the couch, which is about two feet from the door—his apartment is “efficient, manageable” in realtor parlance, which translates to “minuscule,” but Otabek loves having his own place. He turns on the thirty-inch monitor he has instead of a real TV and puts down his plate long enough to pull up the stream he’d bookmarked earlier. “Top six. Russian broadcast,” he says without preamble, picks up his plate, and hits play.

During the opening announcements, Feruza tucks up her legs and grabs a throw pillow to hug. “I told you about the guy who freaked out when they announced your free skate music, right? Even when it turned out to be a weird arrangement?”

“A cool arrangement,” Otabek counters. He’s still pleased with the subtlety of it, the light hand with the rock elements making it feel like Beethoven just happened to be composing for modern instruments and felt like it needed a little shredding. “The ‘it had to be the second’ one?”

“Yeah. Ismail. Fucking opera kids. He’s been asking about you since last Sunday, I swear.”

“Does he want…” He recalculates. “What does he want?”

“I don’t think he knows, exactly. I offered to give him your number and he turned purple.”

“Dearest of sisters—”

“I wouldn’t have given it without checking with you! Give me some credit. Okay, who’s this?”

The announcements and fluff are over, and the first skater—a lanky guy with more scruff than typical; he looks like an out-of-place surfer—is in place in the center of the rink. “Czech… Oh, yes, Nekola. Last season was mediocre for him. He placed third overall here.”

“Boring costume.”

“ _Understated_ costume.”

“You’re figure skaters. ‘Understated’ shouldn’t even be in your vocabularies.”

They argue peaceably through Nekola’s short program, and those of the Swedish and French skaters after him. Then the Russian commentator gets excited: “And now, the senior debut of the prodigy of Russia, the future of figure skating, Nikiforov 2.0—the fifteen-year-old Yuri Plisetsky!”

A tiny kid with chin-length wheat-blond hair and a glittering white-and-grey bodysuit heads out onto the ice. He’s got a face like he’s plotting a murder, but the second he hits his spot, he goes clean. He exhales; his shoulders drop and his face smooths into serenity, eyes down, hair floating into place as the feathery embellishments on the shoulders of his costume settle.

“You’re doing the thinking face,” Feruza says.

“Switching to seniors this early is ballsy. He only started juniors two seasons ago,” says Otabek. “But won both Worlds and the GP. Both times. Came in second here.”

The music starts, a high, clear choral line over a quiet pipe organ, and the boy begins moving. They’re both silent until his first jump—a triple axel, beautifully executed.

“Nice,” says Otabek, and does not add that his own is cleaner.

Feruza puts her phone on the arm of the couch. “Press calls him the Russian Fairy.”

He snorts; he can’t help it. “Bet he takes that _real_ well. Heard he chewed out some poor guy who fell apart at last year’s GPF—”

“His other nickname is the Russian Punk.”

“Must love the music, then.” The choral line is now three voices, or three layers of the same voice harmonizing; it sounds like the middle of a winter night after a snowfall, when it’s so cold the stars look like diamonds and the air is so clear it seems like glass, and somehow the boy’s motion reflects this, even the short dancing steps on his toe picks—delicacy and clarity and— “He’s _good_.”

“Two-time world champ and you’re surprised he’s good?” Feruza’s tone lacks her typical investment in sarcasm—she’s half-distracted, eyes locked on the screen.

“For his senior debut, it’s impressive.” Plisetsky completes a quad-triple combination. “Shit.”

“Worried?”

“Intrigued.”

It seems like the spell Plisetsky is casting on the two of them now had caught the live audience as well. As he follows the haunting vocal harmony into his final pose—curved backward from the waist, nearly a layback, clasped hands pointed skyward—no one seems to _move_ until he’s dropped the pose and taken his first bow. His non-choreographed motions are perfunctory: he doesn’t want to be standing still and waving; he wants to skate or nothing. Otabek sympathizes, but mentally congratulates his fifteen-year-old self for having been less fucking obvious about it.

Plisetsky picks up a stuffed tiger from the ice on his way to the kiss-and-cry. Just before he reaches the boards, he looks up, somehow identifies which of the dozen-odd cameras is doing close-ups, and grins into the lens in a manner most properly described as demonic.

“Who _is_ this kid?” says Feruza.

“Uncertain.”

The memory appears suddenly, fully formed: he, in dropping some overly mannered position that demanded too much of his weird mid-growth-spurt limbs, catches the level gaze of a blond kid holding a flawless arabesque and a face like stone from across the studio, while the instructor snarls something humiliating. The sticking point is the thought _no medal is worth this crap; there has to be another route, even if I make it up as I go along_ —the first time it had struck him altogether like that. But now, focusing elsewhere, putting together the age, nationality, hair, and skating form, that grace and that effortfully empty face, Otabek is struck for a different reason. “He was in my first training camp. In Russia.”

“Really?”

“He’d have been ten.”

Feruza knows him well enough to ask: “Is this just trivia, or was he somehow memorable?”

“He told me,” says Otabek, “to quit ballet before my face broke the studio mirrors.” A child’s clear piping voice, nowhere near the cracks plaguing Otabek’s own larynx that horrendous year.

She pulls a face. “Charmer.”

“Never figured out whether he was calling me ugly or threatening me.”

“But you quit ballet.”

“That afternoon. Gulnara nearly had a stroke.” But his first serious coach had come through like a champion, despite his pubescent tantrum (which, on review, was quite tame). She’d gone to the trainer Felt-something within the hour, stated that her student was choosing a different path, shouted him down over her ability to work productively with her student within the framework of his precious prancy-camp without following Feltsomething’s orders to the letter, and had three different options for movement instruction and flexibility training lined up by the next morning. He was so grateful—and so pleased with the concept of two forms of martial arts as part of skating—that he’d tried and stuck with all three.

They’d been a good team while he was still figuring out how exactly the hell he was going to go about being an internationally ranked skater. After three years and five medals of various colors, she had placed him in Karim’s hands when she’d started bed rest for a difficult second pregnancy; they’d clicked so well that he had followed Karim to the US.

Plisetsky’s score puts him in first, which is no small feat after Nekola, but he just nods when he hears it and grimaces absently, almost reflexively, as one of his coaches—a heavyset balding man with a neck approximately the same size as Plisetsky’s waist—begins talking to him. It’s clearly a lecture.

“But he got silver?”

“Well, there’s—”

The announcer says it for him. “Next, Canada’s own Jean-Jacques Leroy. Heavy audience turnout in his home country, as you can hear…”

“Oh.” Feruza sounds like she’s just noticed she’s stepped in dog leavings. “ _This_ fucker.”

“This fucker,” Otabek agrees. “I mean, maybe—”

JJ’s music starts.

Otabek gives up on his sentence.

He’s never been a fan of JJ’s—he finds it weird, how the tiny community of top-tier skaters sustains both people with giant sloppy fan-crushes and the subjects of those crushes—but they’d been friendly when they were both in Detroit. JJ had helped him perfect a quad Salchow; he’d given JJ advice on his triple axel. They’d hung out in the off-season and eaten together during training. Then Otabek headed to Montreal, and JJ…lost his info, apparently. Otabek had texted him a couple weeks after he moved, mentioning a new-to-him, old-to-JJ rinkmate who’d asked him to say hi, and received an instant automated reply.

[August 27, 2012, 18:32 EDT, Montreal, Quebec, Canada]

 **jjtheking:** I’ve had a lot going on and can’t respond to messages personally, but if you want to keep up, you can subscribe to my newsletter! ~*It’s JJ style!*~

Now he finds it funny. To Feruza, though, it’s unforgiveable.

But Otabek has just discovered the point past which his defense of a flaky former training partner is no longer morally tenable.

JJ’s short program music is _garbage_.

They both sit in stunned silence through the first verse.

“My soul hurts,” Feruza says, as the chorus begins. “Oh, fuck, this is going to be an earworm—”

“I hate this,” he replies, “with every fiber of my being.”

They both fall still again, watching the sparkly purple streak that is JJ Leroy swoop through a combination that Otabek would admire if it weren’t in front of _this fucking song_. “I’m almost impressed,” he confesses. “He’s managed to find every _single_ element of—fuck, is that a string ensemble? _Every_ element of every bad pop song except for a fucking saxophone and—” He smacks the couch cushion next to him. “Who fucking produced this?” He realizes his voice has risen into a half-shout.

“Abomination,” Feruza mutters. “Monstrosity. Disgrace. Crime against auditory processing.” She’s glaring at her phone, having given up any pretense of interest in JJ’s actual skate, and if Otabek weren’t hoping to compete with this peacock in the series final, he’d be doing the same. “Oh, the backing band won a _Grammy_ , that’s so _sweet_ —”

“It’s nice how musicians are so supportive of each other.”

She flips him off, a gesture she’d picked up at an American music camp two years previous; she considers it more direct, versatile, and aesthetically pleasing than the fig sign, its Kazakh equivalent. “And _he_ is working on his first album, quote, in his free time, unquote.”

“Bet that made his newsletter.”

“Weekly updates on JJ’s musical craps. I didn’t think I could hate him more, but he had to go and reveal that he sings through his nose… Is he going to be at NHK?”

“Blessedly, no. Rostelecom.”

“But he took gold here.”

“He did. High base scores.”

“Kill him at the final,” Feruza says. “Metaphorically. Or not.”

“He’s not worth a life sentence.”

“Don’t fuck up killing him, then.”

“Is this why you want me to make a skating friend? So they can help hide the body?”

“Oh, you know,” she says vaguely.

They are equally stone-faced through the last short program, and only begin to thaw during the first three unremarkable free skates, casually ragging on costumes, complimenting music, analyzing jumps, and discussing the merits of the flowy gesture-y crap other skaters are so good at. Nekola’s dub-house cyborg-themed free skate cheers Otabek a great deal—it’s kitschy, but adventurously so, and he’s not-so-secretly in love with the ridiculousness of EDM, even when it’s the kind that involves clap machines.

Then the Russian is back, now in a black bodysuit with a stretch of fishnet wrapped around his back and onto his left shoulder. The collar, wrists, and ankles are edged with asymmetric flame-shaped accent panels in red and pink; the overall effect is like a techno-goth candle with five wicks. His hair is half-pulled back, with two braids starting at each temple. And his music is… insane. Swapping among three different time signatures, for one thing; strict classical, for another; a relentless tempo throughout.

The mood is completely unlike the angelic coolness of his SP; he flings himself from pose to pose and his first jump is _furious_. In context, the flame-riddled costume is perfect, like a shout.

“Fairy. Russian fairy,” Feruza muses. “Not quite. Djinn. _Rude_ djinn.”

The energy, the dismissive fuck-this-earth bodily scream that is Plisetsky’s free skate, is almost scary, even when he steps out of one quad and under-rotates another. “Maybe his manners have improved.”

“Is _he_ at NHK?”

“No—his second is…also Rostelecom, huh. Home turf for him.”

“That…might be a good thing,” she says, which is the way she suggests _I think this one might be able to beat you, and not just because you don’t front-load jumps_.

“I don’t know,” Otabek says, thoughtful. “He’s certainly visually compelling, but I don’t know if he’s—I mean, his jumps aren’t consistent; his footwork needs attention.” On the ice, Plisetsky curves effortlessly into a half-Biellmann spiral, his body following a nearly perfect semicircle from neck to knee. “His spine might be rubber, but that doesn’t last.”

“It’ll last the season, though. That’s enough.”

He decides this is unanswerable. Anything could be enough, hypothetically, which is why Otabek doesn’t let himself care about the special skills of skaters whose thing is folding themselves into origami or expressing sonnets in how they hold their fingers. He cares about how _he_ skates, and how he compares on components he knows he can nail. Like that quad—

Plisetsky could be interesting competition.

The kid goes through the same routine of stone-faced bows and waves, the selection of a single big-cat plush (a lion this time), the expressionless nod upon receiving his score, the grimace as the _other_ coach—a lady whose contouring wouldn’t look out of place on a Kardashian—starts chewing him out in rapid-fire Russian. Something about artistry and beauty; the camera cuts to a close-up of JJ, standing by the boards and talking to his parent-coaches, before Otabek can make out any more of the woman’s harangue.

JJ’s free skate is set to some symphonic rock drivel that should be burned at the stake, but the actual program is… good. Upsettingly good.

It seems like Plisetsky agrees: the entire time he’s on the podium, his mobile, sharp-featured face shifts from smooth confidence to stubborn pride to chagrin to, memorably, outright fury when JJ does his dumbass hand thing. He cuts his eyes to his left every few seconds—not at Nekola, who just looks happy to be there, but at JJ.

Otabek finds himself marking each change in his stance, his expression. For about one in five camera flashes, Plisetsky seems to catch himself and remember that this is being documented as part of his history as a skater—he squares his narrow shoulders and tips his small chin up, eyes forward. In those moments when he remembers the cameras, his startlingly blue-green eyes still hold a look like he’s suppressing a lifetime for the sake of focusing on _right now_.

“You’re not saying much.”

A moment passes, before Feruza clarifies, “Even for you.”

“Thinking,” says Otabek. He feels twelve again. “It’s been—well, we only overlapped in juniors for the one year, his first, my last. Not a great season for me. I only advanced because I got it together late in the game, pulled silver at 4CC. This season, though, if I skate against him—”

“When,” his sister corrects, loyally.

“You’re my best fan. Now, when I actually know what I can do and when and how well—I don’t know. It’ll be interesting.”

There are snippets of post-awards interviews. Otabek and Feruza groan their way through JJ’s posturing but immediately fall silent when the camera cuts to Plisetsky, flanked by his two trainers. Compared to Otabek’s memory, Plisetsky’s voice is shockingly low and almost gravelly—about five years older than he is, and about ten older than he looks. “I only lack experience,” he says in lightly accented English to the interviewer— _not_ to the camera, unlike fucking JJ. “I’m working with two of the most talented trainers alive, and this is just my debut. You’ll see me again.” One corner of his mouth curls up, not quite a smile, not quite a sneer. “You’ll want to see me again.”

Cut to Nekola. Second cut to JJ. And “The next event in the Grand Prix series will be the Cup of China, featuring—” And black.

“Get your money’s worth?” he asks Feruza.

“Absolutely. Same time next week?”

“Bring Ismail.”

She cackles like a witch as she yanks her boots on.

Otabek replays the podium after she leaves—not because he really wants to see JJ chewing on an oversized coin or other assorted skate-competition scenery, but to mark again Plisetsky’s stunning presence in the twenty per cent of the time he remembers to have it. He no longer feels twelve; instead, he feels like he’s watching himself _at_ twelve, when he’d been talented enough to knock out regional novice competitions by the handful—and then he'd hit juniors like it was a brick wall, and suddenly it wasn’t enough to just skate, there was all this other crap he had to worry about and be _good at_.

He wonders if Plisetsky knows he might hit the same wall.

He wonders if Plisetsky even knows there _is_ a wall.

***

A week later, Feruza is settled on his couch—sans Ismail—and Otabek is stretching on the floor, counting through a low-energy pose sequence to keep his brain quiet. He and Karim have been tweaking both of his programs, strategizing on which jumps could go where to boost his base scores. It seems like it’s going well, but after close to three weeks of it he finds himself running calculations of multipliers and GOEs for hours after he’s gotten off the ice. Nothing shuts up the endless stream of arithmetic but focusing elsewhere, and yoga pose sequences combined with watching the Cup of China should occupy his full attention.

The extra stretching isn’t a bad idea, either.

“Russian broadcast again,” he says. “Popovich, plus the skater Viktor Nikiforov ran off to coach.”

“That’d certainly be a draw,” Feruza says. “Oh, Chulanont! He was—”

“Fourth at Skate America. He placed first here.”

Both of his programs use music from a movie franchise, which Otabek _usually_ hates. Soundtracks are intended to back up a full narrative; picking a two- to five-minute segment and sticking it out of context shreds all the score’s leitmotifs and variations and resonance, and it just becomes pretty noise. Medleys are cheap and hacky, and tracks from musicals are so vocally focused they distract from the ice—

Except _distraction_ is impossible when Phichit Chulanont is dancing over the ice in flashes of gold embroidery on red fabric and his brilliant smile, inviting you to shut up and enjoy yourself for a couple minutes.

“How’s he _selling_ this?” Feruza says wonderingly. “I should hate it, god, the lyrics alone, but he’s—I mean, if I were there I’d be clapping along like a dipshit.” She pauses. “Possibly just to pretend the audience wasn’t rushing the tempo, as usual, but like. You know.”

“In person he’s kind of magnetic—in a good way. It translates. He’s a born entertainer. Nice break from the rest of us.”

Guanghong Ji’s short program is like he remembers from Skate America—sweet, poetic, good matching between his motion and the music. “I need more sparkles,” says Feruza.

“You’re not getting them. Be nice, he’s a good guy.”

“ _You’re_ a good guy and I’m not nice to _you_. Speaking of sparkles, what the hell is your exhibition outfit?”

“Comfortable,” Otabek says from cobra pose. “This one,” he adds, as the camera cuts to Katsuki Yuuri. “Nikiforov’s coaching him.” The living legend who’d stood in the center at Worlds is at the boards, index finger pressed to his lips, as the Japanese skater heads to the center of the rink, swathed in fishnet with a half-skirt panel.

“Oooh, Loub skirt, I like it,” says Feruza. “The red lining. Good design.”

“One of Nikiforov’s junior costumes, according to Karim.”

The first ten seconds of Katsuki’s short program make Otabek, who has given up proper sequences in favor of just hanging out in a lunge, trading legs when he remembers, thank the universe for cute men who can work their hips. His music is weirdly familiar, but Otabek can’t place it until Feruza says, “Wait—this is a melodic variation on—” She thumbs at her phone. “Yes, on Yuri Plisetsky’s SP music!”

He blinks, hard. The airiness of Plisetsky’s short program, all white and sparkling, juxtaposed with Katsuki sliding meltingly through this step sequence sheathed in black mesh—

“Two movements of _On Love_ , scored for mixed chorus/symphony,” Feruza continues. “Katsuki’s using the first movement, Eros, but Yuri Plisetsky’s is the third, Agape, which we saw last week, and then the other movements are Philia and Storge, with interludes, kind of like how _Pictures_ is structured…”

“Eros. Sex appeal?” Otabek can’t say he coolly evaluates Katsuki Yuuri for his ability to express sex appeal, because he’s been outright ogling for a minute straight. (Not straight. Extremely not straight.) Katsuki’s movements are liquid, his eyes half-lidded. “Got that down.”

“Hang on. Plisetsky’s SP was choreographed by Nikiforov. Who is _Katsuki’s_ coach.”

“Might be a story there.”

“If you make friends like I _tell_ you to, you could find out what it is.”

He is about to answer when the camera clips to the next skater, Popovich, standing rinkside. He splutters. “Since when did Marilyn fucking Manson skate the Grand Prix?”

“The _costume_ , god—”

The end of Katsuki’s skate is cool enough to distract Otabek completely; he’s got charisma (to be discreet) out his ears, his final pose is electric and perfectly timed, and Nikiforov is so excited he forgets where he’s supposed to meet Katsuki off the ice. “Have you ever seen that one _giddy?_ ” Feruza asks. “I mean, I know you’ve only had the one season, but…”

“I think this is the first time I’ve seen him without poise.” Otabek doesn’t blame him. He decides he’s done with lunges and arranges himself more comfortably, leaning his back against the couch and stretching his legs out in front of him.

“You done? You’ve been making me feel like a sack of potatoes.”

“You’re a very talented sack of potatoes,” he tells his sister, who is sprawled across the couch with her legs propped up on its back, holding one of the throw pillows over her chest. “But yeah, I’m done.”

Popovich’s short program would be good, if he happened to change absolutely everything about his clothes and makeup. The music is okay, dramatic orchestral swoops modified—or scored with—thunderclaps; Popovich’s landings line up with those, which sort of works. A close-up shows tears flying out of his eyes during his spin combination.

“Wow, hope that’s waterproof,” Feruza says. “Did he just prance?”

“He pranced.” And then— “That’s the worst waste of a Russian split I’ve ever seen.”

Leo de la Iglesia’s pop song is still… bad. It’s cute. _He’s_ cute, as Feruza had accurately observed. But his music, which is apparently very meaningful to him, and that’s a good sign that Leo is best paired off with Guanghong, is still bad cheap pop-hop that Otabek wants to dumb down with brostep and mash up with the Portal theme for the hell of it. “ _Why_ did the ISU change their music requirements, I’ll never understand—”

“Pop lyricists. Hit factories have so much to answer for. One day, I will meet Max Martin and I will punch him.” Feruza considers. “Twice.”

Christophe Giacometti is up next; he sparkles winsomely at the nearest camera and hugs his coach with what looks like pure, innocent adoration. Otabek is not fooled. Giacometti had stood rightmost at Worlds, and just before the press conference he’d shaken hands with Otabek, pulled him in, and _purred_ directly into his ear. Otabek had nearly yelped; instead, he’d half-choked and stared at Giacometti in disbelief.

Nikiforov had smacked Giacometti lightly on the shoulder and snapped, “Behave,” before arching an eyebrow at Otabek and adding, “For now, anyway,” and by the unearthly powers of being Viktor fucking Nikiforov he managed to imply _everything on the planet_ with three absolutely neutral words. Otabek had spent the entire conference begging the universe to please ignore physics just this once and let him teleport to the moon or the Earth’s core or something, anything, to avoid making eye contact with either of these freakishly breathtakingly beautiful six-foot-tall aliens he was _clearly mistakenly_ sharing a species, let alone a podium, with.

Giacometti takes the ice now in something purple-blue and spangled. “Is that a _harness_?” Feruza says delightedly.

“Wouldn’t put it past him.” The music kicks in, and for sixteen blissful beats Otabek thinks that the guy might have some kind of sense. Then the synth bass cuts in and he can’t help himself; he cracks up. “He’s _actually doing this—_ ”

Feruza manages to maintain a straight face until Giacometti feels himself up for the second time, at which point she bursts into giggles that she can’t suppress until the free skates start. “I’m _crying_ ,” she says, “and I’m supposed to sustain the emotional whiplash of some Swiss dude’s porn right before this cute guy’s—oh fuck, is it a soundtrack—”

“It’s a soundtrack,” Otabek sighs. It’s better than most—the energy and instrumentation are quite good.

“Can’t win ‘em all,” says Feruza philosophically, and adds, “Good outfit, too. Take notes, you.”

Guanghong Ji has adjusted his own jumps after Skate America, and he flubs a couple this time. His combos and triples are good, but that isn’t sufficient to get him on the podium, and he’s out of the running for the final. “He’s good, though,” Otabek says. “Next year, year after—he’ll be good competition.”

Giacometti returns in a relatively conservative costume, which is to say the cutouts on the sides _only_ go from armpit to knee. “The fin panels on the legs,” says Feruza. “Is he trying to do Spanish dancer or fish cosplay?”

“Definitely a little gill-like,” he replies thoughtfully. “Could go either way.”

Thirty seconds into his program, Feruza puts her throw pillow over her face and screams into it. When she emerges, she says with perfect composure, “I do wish people would quit messing with Boléro.”

“This has more variation—”

“Which is the _problem!_ By definition, by _intention_ , it’s a terrible piece for skating; let the poor thing _go_.”

“Look, it’s Giacometti,” says Otabek. “He’s got to have something more blatantly about sex than the original Boléro. Which _is_ about sex—” his sister was about to protest—“I’m not going to argue with Bloom’s interpretation, but it’s clearly the straight vanilla kind that Giacometti has probably never had in his life.”

“What do _you_ know about Christophe Giacometti’s sex life?” Feruza demands. “All he posts on Instagram is his cat—”

“When did you start following Giacometti's Instagram?”

“Evading the question,” she says warningly. “Come on, Otash, cough up.”

“Whatever he posts online wouldn’t convey his complete inability to speak a sentence without alluding to something packaged in brown paper.”

“I require _specifics_ —”

“Maybe when you’re older.”

She throws her screaming pillow at his head. He tucks it behind his back.

By comparison, Phichit Chulanont’s free skate is so wholesome it feels like it came from a different planet. “Wait,” says Feruza. “From the same franchise? The song?”

“The second movie—I don’t even know what it’s about, honestly. The plot of the first is straightforward, sort of, except for the cards thing, but the sequels… There’s half a dozen and apparently they just get progressively weirder. There’s time travel. Possibly aliens.”

“And good woodwinds,” Feruza comments.

Otabek nods. “Works well with how Chulanont moves. The—hm. Playfulness?”

“I’m surprised you know the word, but you’re right.”

He rolls his eyes.

Leo’s program is fine; it’s not incredible, but the music is better. Neither of the Altins stops groaning once Georgi Popovich takes the ice, both for the overdramatic ‘80s pop and for his weepiness (“I know emoting is supposed to be good, but then _this_ happens…”); they don’t let up until the camera cuts to Katsuki Yuuri, who is wearing something well-cut in navy with a diamond-shaped mesh panel on the back. A deep red accent, like an applique, glitters across his shoulders and down his spine, onto the mesh, where it’s joined by emerald-green flourishes. His face is flushed, eyes overbright.

“Was he _crying?_ ” says Feruza.

At the boards, Katsuki slowly, deliberately takes two tissues from Nikiforov’s ridiculous poodle tissue holder, blows his nose, and balls up the tissues. He holds them out toward Nikiforov, who reaches—and Katsuki pulls his hand back a few inches and lets them fall.

Nikiforov has to lunge to catch his skater’s used Kleenex.

Otabek almost barks a laugh. “Power play.”

Katsuki pokes the crown of his coach’s head, once, twice, and a pat. Nikiforov is still bent nearly in half over the fence, clenching used tissues in one gloved hand; Otabek, watching, cannot for love or money hazard a guess on what’s going on between the two of them. Then Katsuki heads to the center of the rink, a ghost of a smirk playing across his face. His eyes are a little red, but he looks serene as his music starts.

 _Definitely_ a story there.

The music is a sweet piano piece. An original commission, which Otabek usually mistrusts, but it’s dynamic and melodic and well-balanced. It works to highlight Katsuki’s skills—he’s got the best range of expression out of anyone on the ice, and while Otabek doesn’t do that kind of thing, he can identify and admire the strengths of other skaters—while holding its own as a composition. Then Katsuki jumps—a quad toe loop—just as the piece comes to a rest, and Otabek gasps loudly enough for Feruza to hear.

“What’s up?”

“That’s _courage_ ,” he says. “I’ll replay if he doesn’t—there’s just his own blade scraping and then him in the air, nothing else distracting from him, and the timing is _perfect_ —”

The program itself is good, but it could be better. Katsuki mucks up a triple axel, and Otabek isn’t sure what exactly he’s trying to do with that quad flip.

But apparently Nikiforov knows. When he body-checks Katsuki back onto the ice, with bonus lip-lock, Feruza claps her hands to her mouth and squeals through her fingers.

Otabek folds his arms. “Not terribly safe.”

“You do not have a _single_ romantic cell in your _body_ —”

“No; I have the ER record for a concussion at ten and a half from horsing around. Nikiforov should know better.”

Feruza throws the remote at him. He doesn’t even duck. He knows he deserves it.

When he replays Katsuki’s free skate to show Feruza exactly what he meant about the timing of Katsuki’s first jump, he lets the entire thing run, including that _freaking kiss_ , and feels like his heart might explode. His little sister mocks him for a sap.

He has no argument.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Allan Bloom has a lot of feelings about Ravel's Boléro. I, through fictional skate boys & their even more fictional sisters, have a lot of feelings about everything else. ch 3 next week! thank you for reading!


	3. thoughts converge to

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “High-strung and unpredictable” describes fifty per cent of figure skaters on any given day. After a competition, the applicability asymptotically approaches one hundred.
> 
> Otabek's NHK Trophy, featuring new ways to fail to make friends.

[November 15, 2014, 19:57 JST, Osaka, Japan/14:57 ALMT, Almaty, Kazakhstan]

**feruzaaa:** ik ur music ritual thing is imminent but my girl rin (met her @ the tokyo festival) is THERE  & streaming straight onto youtube so im watching LIIIIVE  
**feruzaaa:** BEST LUCK  
**otabek_a:** appreciated.

He mutes text notifications and puts in his earbuds. By random drawing, Otabek is the second skater for the NHK short program, but between administrative crap and skating standard time, he’s not rushed for his pre-skate music thing. Ritual. Whatever. He’s an athlete. Athletes are allowed to have pregame rituals.

First, he brings up Samarkand Overture. He lifts a hand to let Karim know he’s checking out—one of the first of many nonverbal cues they’d worked out; neither of them is big on talking—and closes his eyes, envisioning the program as he sees it: a blur that is the audience, the line between the ice and boards at the rink’s edge, his own arms and hands.

As he stretches his legs, he works through the gestures during his program. Choreography, all lines and strength, and the jumps—arms pulled tight to his body, emphasizing his form and precision, which he knows are his top selling points until he can pull in more quads and better height. For the spins, he rehearses his upper-body positions, ensures he gets the proper curvatures and angles. Then the final pose, ensuring it all lines up with the musical cues and his own back-of-head counting. Rinks have terrible acoustics, and he doesn’t _really_ trust anything but his mental clock for programs. Which is fairly typical, and how Katsuki could pull off that silent-but-for-ice-noise rendition of Nikiforov’s free skate—

Okay, so he and Feruza had done some googling after the Cup of China.

He opens his eyes. Karim gives him a thumbs-up—his only feedback: all well—and flashes five fingers, then one. Six minutes ‘til he’s up. Good.

Otabek taps his phone screen and pulls up his thrash metal playlist, dithers for one full second in choosing between two tracks, and then hits play.

He closes his eyes again.

Guitar noodling that turns into chords, followed by a drum fall, more noodling, the bass kicks in, cymbals, and then the lead guitar _shreds_ , before a scream rips its way out of James Hetfield’s throat and the song’s structure gets dragged together by sheer will.

_No life ’til leather_ —

He drums his fingers on his own leg through the track, following the lead guitar and the drum falls and nodding along with the rhythm line. The second it’s over, he yanks out the earbuds, turns the phone off, and hands it to Karim. “Ready.”

“Which one?”

“Hit the Lights.”

Karim grins. “Good pick.”

At the edge of the rink, he breathes in, blows it out, and rolls his neck. “Give ‘em hell,” says Karim; Otabek nods and sails off.

The skate goes precisely as it did in his last charmed practice. Not the six-minute warmup, where he’d fucked up a perfectly ordinary double axel like an idiot, half out of superstition: if the preparation is perfect, there’s nowhere to go but down for the real thing. But in the practice session last night, everything had just _fit_ , and the same feeling of rightness, of skating a pattern that’s already been made, washes over him.

His triple axel is sweet and clean, the combination jump as powerful as he can get it, his choreography crisp. Sharp lines, precise shapes, exacting angles, clean landings. And that final pose, right arm angled over his head, forming an abstracted letter K with his whole body: _for you, my country_.

At the kiss-and-cry, Karim looks almost smug. “That’s my metalhead,” he says, and claps Otabek on the shoulder.

[20:16 JST/17:16 ALMT]

**feruzaaa:** SHRIEKING  
**feruzaaa:** NEW PB

[20:22 JST/17:22 ALMT]  
**otabek_a:** feeling kind of shrieky myself, honestly.  
**feruzaaa:** okay thatd be weird  
**otabek_a:** glad the new jumps worked out.  
**feruzaaa:** never doubted you  
**otabek_a:** always my best fan.  
**feruzaaa:** ok please note  
**feruzaaa:** literal tears in my eyes as I type the obligatory  
**feruzaaa:** have u made a friend  
**otabek_a:** dearest sister  
**otabek_a:** NHK started less than 9 hours ago.  
**feruzaaa:** ok that’s ok you have the weekend I believe in u

***

[November 16, 2014, 20:03 JST/17:03 ALMT]

**feruzaaa:** otash rin is streaming again but I have a date in 10min im sorry gooD LUCK  
**otabek_a:** go get ready then!  
**otabek_a:** stop texting your weird brother!  
**otabek_a:** have fun! be safe! use protection!  
**feruzaaa:** R U MAKIGN FUN OF ME  
**otabek_a:** never.

He’s second-to-last in the free skate; Seung-gil Lee, the 20-year-old South Korean executor of the first ratified quad loop, had pulled an SP score a few tenths of a point higher than his. He feels calm. He hasn’t seen Lee’s free program yet, and he knows from the Internet that it has a pretty good base score, but his own is comparable. In his dry run, Karim points out exactly one thing he should pay attention to—one gesture that isn’t sloppy _now_ , but that has the chance to be if Otabek happens to get distracted or flustered. Otabek runs it once more, with attention on the gesture and the jump afterward, and Karim gives him the thumbs-up before flashing a five and a two.

He doesn’t jinx Hit the Lights by repeating it, and spends a minute scrolling his playlist before deciding that Metallica has served him well enough to deserve his trust. Battery is just as good, with that almost-sweet guitar opening before it starts tearing.

“Okay,” he says, and hands his phone back to Karim. “Let’s go.”

“You’re the one going, Altin.”

His costume is good. His skates are sharp. His mind is clear.

He absolutely fucking nails Beethoven 9 (second movement, “Genesis” edit, as arranged by Matsushiba and performed by Ensemble FOVE).

***

[21:49 JST/18:49 ALMT]

**feruzaaa:** I LOOKED @ SCORES  & IY ELLED & SCARED MY DATE SO BAD & I DONT EVEN CARE  
**feruzaaa:** UR NOT GONNA SEE THIS FOR ANOTHER HR OR STH IDGAF I LOVE YOU IM SO HAPPY  
**feruzaaa:** SHIT I GOTTA PLACATE MY DATE IM LIKE NONVERBAL SHE THINKS ITS BAD CRYING IM SO FUCKING PROUD OF U

[23:11 JST/20:11 ALMT]

**otabek_a:** were you able to salvage the date?  
**feruzaaa:** OMG OFC U ASK as if it matterssss  
**otabek_a:** I mean if my date had looked at their phone and screamed and started crying I can imagine it’d damage the mood.  
**otabek_a:** I’d hate to be responsible for that.  
**feruzaaa:** no omg I showed her the scores  
**feruzaaa:** & she started laughing & YELLING AT ME  
**feruzaaa:** like “THAT altin how could you not TELL ME hes ur BROTHER ur his SISTER omGGGGG”  
**feruzaaa:** & then we both had a lot of feelings & made out abt it we’re hanging again tomorrow but ENOUGH ABT ME  
**feruzaaaa:** GOLD  
**feruzaaa:** GOLDGOLDGOLD  
**otabek_a:** I feel like I’m high.  
**otabek_a:** or like  
**otabek_a:** I don’t even know

He doesn’t. Even know. He’ll know in a week, after the Trophée Éric Bompard in France, whether he’s in or out, although it’s looking a lot like the first. Historically, someone who medals at both qualifiers is favored, but it’s still not a sure thing, and the third of his brain that is retaining logic is muttering something about chickens and premature counting. But that medal—this medal, the one still on his neck—

He has no clear memory of what he said during the press conference; he remembers Karim grinning like a maniac and shaking hands with the two other medalists’ coaches, and he remembers hugging Lee Seung-gil, who’d gotten silver, and Lee’s eyes widening slightly in surprise or annoyance or something—whatever, he can do inscrutable, that doesn’t mean he has to interpret it in other people. He only shook hands with Michele Crispino, whose face after he hugged Lee was so forbidding that even the handshake had felt like a stretch.

**otabek_a:** does your face hurt when you smile sometimes?  
**feruzaaa:** HAH u just won me 500 KZT I said you were gonna smile til u started worrying abt it  & d8 zhanat said she thought you’d be stoic  
**otabek_a:** favorite sister, answer the question please.  
**feruzaaa:** yes, otash, that’s called happiness, it is WHAT I AM FOR YOUUUUU  
**otabek_a:** buy something nice with your winnings.

***

[November 16, 2014, 0:36 JST/21:36 ALMT]

**feruzaaa:** imma buy zhanat  & me ice cream tmrw for ur victory  
**feruzaaa:** & it almost doesn’t matter im too happy but  
**feruzaaa:** have u made a frieennnnnnnnnnddddddd

“High-strung and unpredictable” describes fifty per cent of figure skaters on any given day. After a competition, the applicability asymptotically approaches one hundred. For that reason, Otabek isn’t necessarily _surprised_ when someone knocks on his door at a quarter to one, while he’s contemplating ways to not answer Feruza.

He’s not sleeping—clearly—and he’s decent, wearing sweatpants and a sleeveless undershirt, so he opens the door of his hotel room and finds Lee Seung-gil, still in his blue-trimmed black warmups, still wearing his silver medal around his neck. He is staring at Otabek with weird laser-like focus, if lasers were to come in grey.

“You’re legal,” he says in English, unaccented.

“Yes…?”

“As of two weeks ago. I,” Lee continues, “am emotionally compromised, because I’m supposed to be happy about the shiny thing—” he flicks the ribbon of the medal—“but I won’t know if I qualified until after Rostelecom, and I need to do something stupid. Do you think I’m attractive?”

_Oh_. “How about you come in—”

Lee steps past Otabek, turns, pushes the door shut over Otabek’s own shoulder, and says all in one breath, “If you don’t want to make out with me which would be a shame the next-highest in ranking who’s flexible is that Belgian guy Maes but he may be attached and I’m not really feeling like fighting anyone at the moment.” He pauses, then adds, “I note that in saying ‘do something stupid,’ I didn’t intend innuendo implying anything about your intelligence. Or about actually having sex with you. Unless you have—” He blinks twice, re-settles his stance—possibly his equivalent of blushing—and finishes, “I’m going to shut up until you say yes or no.”

It seems like this is a lot of words for him to say at once.

Otabek looks carefully at Lee. His eyes are clear, and his speech so precise it seems unlikely he’s impaired—plus there’s the exhibition skate tomorrow.

“Are you sober?” he asks anyway.

Lee apparently takes his own “until you say yes or no” statement seriously: he lets out an exasperated huff and nods. He still hasn’t broken eye contact.

Otabek does so for him, looking him over head to toe and back up. Lee is still gazing straight at him. He shrugs and says, “Okay,” but before the entire word is actually out of his mouth, Lee’s own is _on_ it and there are some hundred-and-thirty-something pounds of Korean figure skater pressed against him. The medal is cold through the fabric of his shirt.

Then things kind of go simultaneously vague and intense and Otabek unzips Lee’s warmup jacket, which is a trick with the fucking ribbon getting in the way, and Lee shrugs it off onto the floor and ditches the medal like it’s trash and once he’s peeled Otabek’s shirt off over his head Lee pushes him against the door and goes for his waistband and what kind of absolute _robot_ only activates for skating and messing around with other skaters? After _losing to them_?

He consciously decides that it is time to stop thinking about that. This may be related to how Lee gasps, almost whines, when Otabek curls his fingers in the hair at the back of his head and yanks.

After, they’re sitting forehead-to-forehead on the floor among discarded clothing; Lee locks eyes with him again. “You’re good,” he says. “Skating and this. You’re good.”

Probably the best feedback he’s going to get from this one. “You too.”

Apparently, this is the wrong thing to say. Lee rears backward and his expression goes blank—blanker. Otabek can see his pupils constrict. “I lost. Fuck you.”

He gets up; Otabek does not follow, because the room is small and where the hell is he going to go? Lee leaves the bathroom door open; he’s holding two washcloths under the tap and finding towels. He throws one of each, damp washcloth and towel, toward—not quite _at_ —Otabek, who has to stretch to catch them.

Lee watches Otabek clean up, eyes giving away nothing, and they both dress in silence.

He picks up his jacket from the floor and, as abruptly as he’s done anything else in the last however long, lunges, grabs Otabek by the chin and kisses him on the mouth, quick and hot and thorough. He runs his thumb over Otabek’s lower lip and says, “You’re not getting my number.” He drops his hand and shoves both arms through his jacket sleeves.

“Okay,” says Otabek, nonplussed.

“And this didn’t happen.”

“All right.”

“You’re still good,” Lee says.

“At something that didn’t happen.”

“And at skating. Where you won. Fuck you.”

Otabek only feels mild shock in hearing himself say, “If you come back with condoms, sure.”

People do weird things after competitions.

Lee blinks, then glares, and then leaves. The lock clicks shut behind him.

On Otabek’s nightstand, his phone buzzes.

[01:17 JST/22:17 ALMT]

**feruzaaa:** i hope ur silence means FREND or the sleep of the justly medaled  
**otabek_a:** uh. notably neither.  
**feruzaaa:** ?????  
**otabek_a:** I just kind of made out with the silver medalist. lee seung-gil.

There was nothing “kind of” about it. And “making out” is, generously, an understatement.

**feruzaaa:** ……………………  
**feruzaaa:** are u fucking w/ me?  
**otabek_a:** no; why would I?  
**feruzaaa:** U ACTULLY  
**feruzaaa:** HOW DID U FORGIV THE PARROT THING  
**feruzaaa:** I mean hes hot don’t get me or south korea wrong but that COSTUME  
**otabek_a:** costume irrelevant.  
**feruzaaa:** OMG DID U HOOK UP

When the words appear, he nearly drops his phone.

**otabek_a:** I reserve the right to not answer that question.  
**otabek_a:** on grounds of YOU ARE MY LITTLE SISTER.  
**feruzaaa:** ok, ur right, q retracted, that’d be weird  
**feruzaaa:** was he good????  
**otabek_a:** I mean, it was making out.  
**feruzaaa:** HES A NATIONAL HERO IN SK U FCKNG “IT WAS MAKING OUT” ONLY U  
**feruzaaa:** HOWDO U even make out w/ someone w/o being friends  
**otabek_a:** apparently fairly easily.  
**otabek_a:** I did not get his number.  
**feruzaaa:** why not?????  
**otabek_a:** he said the exact words “you’re not getting my number.”  
**otabek_a:** I didn’t even ask. or offer mine.  
**feruzaaa:** …..wtf  
**otabek_a:** please never date a figure skater. we’re all nuts.  
**feruzaaa:** “we”???????  
**otabek_a:** well, he suggested it, but I took him up on it.  
**otabek_a:** and did not ask for his number.  
**feruzaaa:** ok fair  & u r gd weird.  
**otabek_a:** everything is weird.  
**otabek_a:** but I have a gold medal and I’m going to bed.

He puts his phone on silent (except for his 9AM alarm) and fails to sleep, which may partially be the fault of _The Luminaries_ , but is definitely not the fault of something that didn’t happen, because it didn’t happen, for another three hours.

***

When he hauls himself out of bed and silences his phone’s alarm after scant and crappy sleep, he finds he has a follow request on Instagram from seung-gillee. The account has hundreds of thousands of followers and is mostly skating shots, interspersed with photos of a very cute Siberian husky, or maybe two different very cute huskies. He accepts the request, cautiously follows back, and leaves his phone in his hotel room. He’s going to be with Karim through the exhibition skate, and it’s not like anyone else is planning to talk to him. Maybe Feruza, but she has her ice cream date to look forward to, and she’s used to him being minimally accessible during competitions.

He takes stock: one visible mark between his ears and shoulders, at exactly the point where another person would have to physically yank his T-shirt collar around to see it fully. Whatever; his costume involves a high-collared jacket.

He _had_ considered unveiling his pet project at this exhibition, but on this little sleep Otabek tells Karim at breakfast, “Not up for thinking—just last year’s SP?”

Karim looks him over. His mouth twists in the wry way that means he’s thinking something like _ah, the idiocy of youth_ , but he doesn’t say anything but “I’ll tell the coordinators.”

The skate goes as well as could be expected; he re-downgrades the quad to a triple to avoid injury and making an ass of himself. Unlike in Illinois, now he just _wishes_ he felt like he were sleepwalking; he imagines everything would look less loud. After the post-gala photoshoot, where he believes he acts normally, he heads to his room for a nap, barely managing to change out of warm-ups and pull on sweats before he passes out.

The nap turns into eighteen hours of uninterrupted sleep. Karim has to hassle him through changing into clean clothes, packing, and airport security for the flight back to Almaty, and it isn’t until their layover in Seoul that he actually checks his phone, which shows a text message and an Instagram direct-message notification.

[November 16, 2014, 15:04 JST/12:04 ALMT]  
**feruzaaa:** wanna see your secret projecttttt :c but ur ex piece is still good!! rin loves u now lol

[November 17, 2014, 12:17 JST/09:17 ALMT]  
**otabek_a:** sorry. wasn’t up for it today. was the ice cream good?  
**feruzaaa:** tasted of VICTORY

Nov. 16, 8:42 PM

**seung-gillee:** [selfie, unsmiling]  
**seung-gillee:** why aren’t you at the banquet.  
**seung-gillee:** which is not to say you’re getting my number.

Lee looks good in a suit: fine pinstriping, cool grey shirt, subtly textured blue tie. He’d had a good free-skate costume also following menswear lines, although Otabek had been somewhat too overwhelmed by the gold high and Crispino’s sparkly purple blazer for a detailed assessment. In the selfie, Lee’s eyes have that same burning focus they’d had at Otabek’s door two nights ago, despite his otherwise neutral face.

While Karim is talking to his fiancée on his cell in a quieter spot near the windows, Otabek arranges himself to take a self-portrait photo at the gate. He folds his left leg up with his foot on his seat and uses his knee to steady his phone arm; usually his hands are steady, but he’s got some shakes today, from the weird sleep and the airport stress. He doesn’t try for any specific expression—which, Feruza’s voice says in the back of his head, means resting bastard face—but tilts his head a bit and juts his chin slightly.

The resulting photo prominently features the arch of his neck and angle of his jawline. The t-shirt Karim had thrown at him was a black V-neck, which exposes the mark Lee had left on his collarbone. Also prominent: the Kazakh flag on his hoodie and the iced coffee in his hand.

This is not his first selfie-exchange game, just the weirdest.

He sends the picture as a reply.

Nov. 17, 12:19 PM

**otabek-altin:** 1) didn’t feel like it.  
**otabek-altin:** 2) didn’t ask.


	4. former mysteries

[November 23, 2014, 02:10 ALMT]

 **otabek_a:** feru  
**otabek_a:** I’m going to finals

Giacometti’s bizarre porn programs snag him a gold at Trophée Éric Bombard. Karim texts Otabek in real time, right after the free skates are finished; it’s late, and Karim scolds him for skimping on sleep, but follows that with three grinning emoji and a reminder to be on the ice by 10.

[02:13 ALMT]

 **feruzaaa:** ???  
**otabek_a:** did I wake you?  
**feruzaaa:** no im finishing a history paper wtf!!  
**otabek_a:** why didn’t you do it earlier?  
**feruzaaa:** im 15  & have commensurate time management skills WTFFF!!!!!!!!!!  
**feruzaaa:** WTF “going to finals”  
**feruzaaa:** ELABORATE, JERK  
**otabek_a:** points shook out  
**otabek_a:** after FS at bordeaux  
**otabek_a:** karim confirmed  
**otabek_a:** I’m in  
**feruzaaa:** !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  
**otabek_a:** I’m going to FINALS  
**otabek_a:** I’M going to finals  
**feruzaaa:** look @ u not using punctuation!!!!!!!!!  
**feruzaaa:** ur like a rl person!!!!!  
**otabek_a:** a real person GOING TO FINALS

***

Going into the last qualifier, Giacometti and Otabek are the only two confirmed finalists. Karim texts him the others—again in real time, but Otabek is soundly asleep after a good day’s practice—after the Rostelecom free skates.

[November 30, 2014, 03:17 ALMT]

 **k_sarper:** Altin, your competitors in Barcelona:  
**k_sarper:** Katsuki Yuuri, 24, JP; Yuri Plisetsky, 15, RU; Jean-Jacques Leroy, 19, CA; Phichit Chulanont, 20, TH; Christophe Giacometti, 25, CHE (for some reason is the ISO code for Switzerland).  
**k_sarper:** You’ll clean up against Chulanont, no disrespect to him. Well-matched with Giacometti and Katsuki. Leroy has that base score going for him, so we’ll not expect gold, but hope for it anyway (this year—we’ll work on it). Plisetsky’s an unknown. He’s done very well thus far but he screwed up his SP yesterday. Inconsistency typical at that age. Unless they’re you. Ah, youth.  
**k_sarper:** Ugh, youth. It is past my bedtime.  
**k_sarper:** On-ice training with me today (30th) cancelled. If you want rink time anyway, be my guest.

 _Inconsistency typical, unless they’re you—_ that rankles a little, not that he’s going to admit it. Sure, he’s been consistent, consistent in maintaining middle-of-the-pack status, despite desperate clawing for anything else and half-killing himself to ensure no one notices the desperation.

Aside from last year’s Worlds.

He decides that two weeks before his first Grand Prix final is probably a poor time to have a crisis about his skating legacy and checks the scores from Rostelecom himself.

No one’s scores make sense. Plisetsky tanked his SP relative to Skate Canada, whereas Katsuki grabbed a new personal best for his short before tanking his own free skate. He remembers it was in Moscow, Plisetsky’s hometown—actual hometown, not the way JJ Leroy from fucking Windsor pretends he’s from Toronto just because they share a province. Performance stress? And what’s up with Katsuki? He’s just scraped into the GPF over Crispino, because he’d placed second in the Cup of China, but at Cup of China he looked too good to need to scrape anything.

He's pretty sure he doesn’t just think so because of his feelings about Katsuki’s short program.

Questions for another day, or for the skating forums to thread about. For himself, Otabek is going to the rink in Karim’s absence.

On his way, it strikes him for real that Lee Seung-gil is _not_ among the finalists, and that his scores had been—well, his SP had been fine, noted as a new PB, but his free… something had gone wrong there.

He wonders what the etiquette is here, or if there even is etiquette for it. They haven’t communicated since the airport selfie, although Otabek knows Lee saw it.

As he’s jogging to the rink—he could have taken his bike, but it’s still nice for nearly December, and he likes jogging, which Feruza tells him is further proof he’s an alien—his phone pings. He has an Instagram notification, but doesn’t investigate further until he’s putting on his skates.

He has a new direct message. No photo.

Nov. 30, 09:49 AM

 **seung-gillee:** don’t fuck up GPF.  
**seung-gillee:** 4CC. see you there.  
**seung-gillee:** interpret at will.

He blinks. It’s just past seven in Moscow—they’ll have the exhibition today, banquet later. Why the hell is Lee awake?

That’s Lee’s business, he decides. Receiving an unprompted message is a bit surprising; if Lee had been, as he put it, emotionally compromised by not knowing whether he’d qualify, how had he reacted when his scores had come up and he’d known he was out? The other skaters at Rostelecom—JJ and Crispino, straight as a pair of rulers; underage Plisetsky; Katsuki with his whatever with Nikiforov, Nekola—not terribly promising for a post-loss burn-it-off hookup. Assuming that’s Lee’s coping mechanism.

Which, based on a single data point, may be a poor assumption.

10:07 AM

 **otabek-altin:** yeah, see you there.  
**seung-gillee:** it’ll be nice winning against you.  
**otabek-altin:** was thinking the same thing.

A moment passes, before he receives a photo: Lee, expressionless, flipping off the camera.

Otabek grins and heads for the ice.

***

[December 2, 2014, 18:06, ALMT]

 **otabek_a:** up for rostelecom broadcast?  
**feruzaaa:** yessssssssssssss there in 30  
**feruzaaa:** just finished my last lit paper WITH 24 h to spare for editing I WILL HAVE U KNO  
**otabek_a:** proud of you.  
**feruzaaa:** stfu. bet ur only glad im done early bc u wanna see ur boyf  
**otabek_a:** HA.

When Feruza gets in, the first thing she says, before even taking off her boots, is, “What the fuck does ‘ha’ mean, weirdo?”

He brings up Instagram and his direct messages.

“No no no no no,” Feruza says quickly. “I don’t need to see—”

“Please,” he interrupts. “Phone security these days? Barely hits PG.” He passes her the phone. “And it’s not like that,” he adds, as an afterthought. It isn’t. Considering that _it_ never happened. According to some.

She reads it, three times, eyebrows furrowing deeper each time she scrolls. “Is this like—some kind of stoic dude long-distance courtship ritual? See who can be weirder and _less_ interested? Because you’re both winning.”

“I claim no rituals. Can’t speak for him.”

“Ugh, _boys_ ,” she says, handing back the phone and flopping across the entirety of the couch—it comes across as a full-body eyeroll at the utter idiocy of it all. If she were to give up music, she’d have a beautiful future in acting. “You’re all disturbed. Let’s watch some of you put on knife shoes and try to be prettier than each other.”

“New event name for Pyeongchang. Knife Shoe Beauty Pageant.” He pulls up the stream he’d bookmarked. “Russians again, for obvious reasons.”

“Yeah, okay, on with the bullshit.”

Otabek settles on the floor, leaning against the couch—it’s come to feel like his place, not least because he can’t be bothered to move the one throw pillow from its position as a back rest. “Oh, speaking of bullshit,” he says, and picks up his most recent innovation from the floor next to the couch. He tosses it to Feruza. “JJ’s on again. Don’t break my TV.”

It’s a chunk of mattress foam, three inches thick and about six long. There’s a string around its middle. The other end of the string is tied to the leg of Otabek’s hand-me-down coffee table.

He hits play on the stream as Feruza stares at the brick, held in one hand. She gives the string a little yank and looks at him with a question.

“You don’t have to get up to get it back.”

She grins. “Let the games begin.”

First on is Lee Seung-gil, which Otabek has somehow missed before the camera cuts to him, standing at the boards wearing a truly fucking stupid costume.

“Wait— _that’s_ the parrot thing?”

“Oh my god, you didn’t _know_?”

“I had no idea—”

Lee’s music starts: something calling itself a mambo, apparently on Lee’s insistence. There are trumpets and exuberant percussion and Lee’s skating is technically flawless, but his face is _empty_.

Then his quad loop comes out to play and his eyes flash. Just for a moment, after he’s landed, just before his spiral sequence, and then it’s back to work.

He’s crisp, clean, energetic, but absolutely soulless when he’s not jumping. Otabek is disconcerted. Then he falls out of a triple axel.

Feruza sits up. “The hell was _that_?”

“Couldn’t tell you.”

Lee’s closing is all math; the commentator says some fluff about passion in his step sequence and Otabek wonders if the man actually has eyes. While Lee is waiting for his score, his warmup jacket draped over his rainbow flounce-covered shoulders, he looks like a shell. A placeholder for a different person.

“I don’t get why they announce placings for the person who’s skated first. Oooh, robot boy!” says Feruza, as the image cuts to Nekola. “His SP outfit is so—it’s satisfying. Comparably.”

“You called it boring for Skate Canada.”

“That was _before_ the parrot thing.”

Nekola skates well, but he’s not selling it—he doesn’t look like he’s fighting.

Crispino is third, and Otabek is already laughing as the camera cuts to him. “I’m still—this outfit. The everything. Disco knight? _Drag_ knight? So many puns—”

“His theme is ‘chivalry,’” says Feruza; the don’t-blame-me-for-this quotation marks slot into place neatly. “The forums say it’s about his sister. Crispino’s apparently all kinds of overprotective.”

“Wait—Sara? His sister Sara Crispino?”

“Why, you know her?”

“Not to speak to, just—”

“Well, obviously.”

Lacking a foam brick to throw at his sister, because Feruza is hogging it, Otabek just sighs. “Disregarding your opinion of my social life, I am surprised that Sara Crispino permits anyone to be overly anything about her unless she wants them to be.”

Feruza shrugs. “Sisters are weird.”

He’s opened his mouth to point out the hypocrisy of this assessment when the camera cuts to the next skater at the boards. Nikiforov, on the other side in his trench coat and good shoes, is waving as the crowd— _his_ home country—screams for him. That is, until Katsuki grabs Nikiforov by the tie, says something that leaves Nikiforov _glowing,_ and skates serenely to the center of the ice, holding himself as if this is absolutely normal behavior.

“I’m so glad they’re a thing,” Otabek comments. “I’d be screwed otherwise. I mean—”

The music starts and, after running his hands down his body with a hip roll, Katsuki Yuuri blows a kiss to the judges, which also happens to be to the nearest camera, set to tight focus on his face.

Otabek finds himself saying, “This is _unfair_. One person cannot—”

“Does Seung-gil know you have this much of a crush?”

“Wh—oh, Lee.”

“You don’t even call him his _given name?_ ”

He rolls his eyes—away from Katsuki’s program, which is sheer cruelty on his sister’s part, honestly—and explains. “The thread I showed you, on Instagram? As much as we’ve spoken. I don’t call competitors by their first names. Given names. Whatever.”

“You don’t call JJ his last name.”

“Because JJ _was_ my friend. And Iz still is. If I start calling her boyfriend ‘Leroy’ to her she’d be sad. And it’s a hard habit to break.”

“Wait, you and _Isabella_ _Yang_ are friends?” Feruza sounds shocked.

“They were kind of a package deal in Detroit. Iz and I talked books and music. She got me into all two non-Christian-themed all-ages music nights in the city. We’ve kept up. More than I have with JJ—”

“Otash, the bar for that is like miles below sea level. How’s she doing?”

“She’s pre-med. Busy. Happy. I’ll probably see her in Barcelona. I could put you in touch; she knows the music scene in Ann Arbor. I don’t know if I ever mentioned, she’s a cello player—I mean, not pro, but with her university’s symphony. Might have contacts.”

Feruza rearranges herself on the couch, propping her legs on its back and folding her arms behind her head. “Interesting.”

He thinks he’s safe until she says, “So does _Lee_ know you have this much of a crush? On Katsuki?”

 _Damn it._ He should have made two bricks. “It’s aesthetic admiration,” he replies instead, watching the end of Katsuki’s program, into that fantastic final pose—“Look, that piece, Eros, it includes saxophones and I don’t hate it. Because he sells it. I appreciate his talent.”

“Oh, his _talent,_ huh—ooh, the little one’s back!”

 _The little one_ turns out to be Yuri Plisetsky, glittering in white and silver from head to ankle (why is he in black boots? _Why?_ ). He nearly shoulders Katsuki out of his way onto the rink, despite being about two-thirds of Katsuki’s mass; Katsuki glances wide-eyed from him to Nikiforov, who shrugs.

Plisetsky is stiff through the shoulders and back, and Otabek wonders for a moment if he’s skating injured. That’d be stupid, though, especially at his age.

No, Plisetsky is upset, angry, not physically hurt. He heads to the boards and stands on the ice in front of his two coaches, head down, tension apparent in every inch of his spine, and he doesn’t respond to anything either of them says.

Then Katsuki’s scores come up and the camera cuts to Nikiforov kissing Katsuki’s boot, the skater’s face going as red as the front halves of his blade guards. Feruza squeals.

Cut back to Plisetsky, who looks like he’s about to start screaming—but he bites it down, leans hard against the boards, and then _whips_ away from them and his coaches, both of whom startle. He pulls half a lap around the rink, clockwise away from the kiss-and-cry and too fast for elegance, before cutting to the center of the ice. Once there, he stands still, chest heaving, and when he drops his chin and arranges his hands, his face is still too sharp, his jaw visibly clenched; he’s lucky his hair is long enough to hide it from the sides. He pulls himself together on an inhale and relaxes by an inch on the exhale, but it’s not going to be enough—

The music cuts in and Plisetsky steps through the first few measures. His body makes the right shapes, his blades cut the correct paths, but everything else about it looks _wrong_ —he’s stiff, his face rigid. His first steps and gestures are sharp, cutting: _fuck this, it’s in the right place, keep moving_. Then he fucks up his triple axel.

The commentator sounds perplexed, noting that this is a jump Plisetsky hasn’t failed since before he started juniors.

It looks like the fall shook him, shocked some of the stiffness out of his body. The rest of his skate is clean, but whenever his face is visible it’s clear he’s forcing it, forcing himself to focus and keep it clean and keep whatever is going on far, far away from the ice.

After he steps out of his final pose and waves, people in the audience start tossing flowers and stuffed things, as usual. This time, the shower of cute shit is accompanied by objects Otabek can’t parse, until somehow one lands on Plisetsky’s blond head: a headband with white cat ears, insides colored gray.

“What on—”

“Someone’s got a good arm!”

Then JJ’s on. Feruza throws and retrieves the brick five times before Otabek interrupts her flow.

“Give me a turn—”

She tosses Otabek the brick and he nails televised JJ in the face on the pre-bridge chorus. “I hate,” he says, and throws again, “this man,” and throws again, “and his lyrics are shit.” And throws again. “And I am going to dismember him in Barcelona. Figuratively.”

“Or literally. If you make a _friend_ to help with logistics.”

“That was some very pointed emphasis.”

“I don’t trust you with—with—fuckbuddies.”

If he were the blushing type, he’d be the same color as JJ’s SP outfit. Instead, he fumbles the brick as Feruza cackles.

Nekola’s free skate is as stupid as it was at Skate Canada, in the same joyful I-can’t-believe-I’m-enjoying-this-clap-machine kind of way. He trashes his last three jumps, which Otabek wishes he felt more surprised by.

The Crispino knight is back. His music is still crap and his costume is still trite and he’s still one of those obnoxiously tall tanned Europeans, but his skating is—relaxed, his movements almost languid, and he deserves every one of the twenty points he beats his PB by. “Huh. Remember the playthrough I showed you from NHK? He was so wound up during this program.”

“You’re right,” Feruza says. “Wonder what happened. Oh, here’s your boy—”

He throws the brick at her.

“Hey!”

Lee’s free skate is in shirtsleeves and vest, like he’d remembered, and Otabek is certainly not thinking about how into this look he is when Lee falls apart. Steps out of jumps, hands on the ice, and he’s finally wearing a facial expression: _what the fuck is happening to me?_

Otabek hears himself huff.

“What’s up?”

“He’s twenty. He should be well past this,” Otabek says. He blinks, replays himself mentally, and agrees, so he keeps going. “This whole—you noticed Plisetsky’s SP? Couldn’t get whatever was going on out of his head, let it wipe the rink with him? Or at Skate Canada, where his programs were clean but anytime he was in front of a camera but not speaking he wouldn’t stop _twitching?_ ”

Lee pulls off a clean triple Salchow, but Otabek continues. “It’s this tradeoff of talent versus learned skill, learned grace, or graciousness, or whatever—the performing crap, not just the knife shoe jumping. Plisetsky, Lee—they’re both good enough, enough of the time, in technique and presentation that they haven’t had to learn that they’re not the center of the universe. I hit this my first year in juniors. Couldn’t just clean up at events anymore, had to show why I deserved to be there with something that wasn’t attached to my feet, had to play nice—hell, had to play _at all_. It’s almost understandable for Plisetsky, because his juniors were a cakewalk, but Lee’s old enough. He should’ve already paid for it.”

He falls silent.

They’re both quiet as Lee Seung-gil receives the score that seals his failure to qualify and walks right off camera, leaving his coach staring after him.

“You don’t typically speechify,” Feruza ventures, tentatively.

“I don’t typically give a shit,” replies Otabek, and screens this as well. Does he give a shit? About the amount of _work_ middle-of-the-road skaters put in while the legends float around having things done for them? Yes. About the difficulty of learning that the entire time you’re visible to the judges is your performance, just not necessarily the one being scored right now? Absolutely. About those things as regards Plisetsky, who is just himself but better while younger—yes, in sympathy and frustration. As regards Lee? Approximately. Apparently.

“Does giving a shit qualify as being friends? Because I—”

“Only if it’s mutual,” Feruza says instantly. “Okay, shut up, Plisetsky’s back. See if he’s learned something—”

Plisetsky hurls himself through his free skate, where the slicing quality of his gestures is a bonus, not a detractor. This time, for this skate, he seems like he’s channeling his leftover (or new) rage into _drive_. Not any particular mood, just a general challenge: _you’ll want to see me again_. He’s reshuffled the jumps—he’s not frontloading, unlike a certain Canadian, but instead—Otabek blinks. Only two jumps in the first half? At Canada he’d had eight overall, but six in the back half—and _three_ of those are combinations—it’s murder or suicide or both—

He does it. Plisetsky pulls it off. And then folds over on himself, half-gagging; the camera pulls back to show a screaming audience showering him with flowers, but what the _hell_ is the kid thinking?

If he’s thinking.

He looks like he barely notices his own personal best, until his scary Kardashian coach touches his shoulder and he shakes himself, then stands to wave.

There’s something in the water in Moscow, Otabek decides, because Katsuki blows his program. Not entirely, but enough to knock him off the podium. Plisetsky had apparently figured out the water issue _after_ the previous night, but the damage was done, which made him think he could do six jumps in the second half of his free skate without dying. Lee hadn’t started drinking non-bottled water until the day of the free skate.

JJ and his parent-coaches probably haul coolers of JJ-branded spring water across continents, because he sails through his _Partizan_ bullshit with aplomb and a stupidly high score.

Otabek and Feruza take turns flinging the brick at the screen, swearing whenever one or the other falls into the three-beat time signature.


	5. another downhill slope

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Slight liberties taken with canon dialog from this point forth - episodes 10-12 + WTTM manga.)

[December 6, 2014, 11:37 ALMT]

**feruzaaa:** rly tho ask Javier abt his bike **  
feruzaaa:** he grew up in Tenerife  
**feruzaaa:** so like v sad abt cold  
**feruzaaa:** barely touches his bike between November  & February  
**otabek_a:** poor guy.  
**feruzaaa:** w/e, he’s the idiot who moved somewhere w/ seasons

***

Otabek is perpetually baffled by how exhausting the act of sitting down can be made when it is performed over fourteen hours on two planes and three airports. He and Karim land in Barcelona a little before 4PM local time on the ninth of December. It’s 8PM to his sleepy stupid body, and he’d been up at three-something that morning for international security bullshit, and he _could not_ sleep on either flight, but he knows he shouldn’t risk napping.

After baggage collection and cab-hailing, they each find their rooms on the eleventh floor of the GPF official hotel a bit before five; Otabek unpacks, hangs up his suit, and picks up his text conversation with Feruza’s Barcelona friend Javier. She had told Javier, a twenty-three-year-old classical guitarist with a side gig as a club organizer, about Otabek’s six days in the city and his amateur DJing. Javier had apparently been trying to fill a late slot for a set during that week’s rock night, the same day as the free skate, and was quite taken with the idea of a Kazakh guest DJ.

He’d also agreed, more than happily, to lend Otabek his motorcycle.

[December 9, 2014, 17:14 CET, Barcelona, Spain]

**otabek_a:** hey, I just got in.  
**djavierbeats:** bienvenido! u busy 2day? wanna pick up bike?  
**otabek_a:** I’ll beat the jetlag once I eat—second wind. with any luck. could pick up the bike at 7?  
**otabek_a:** 7ish anyway  
**djaveirbeats:** ish is my middle name  
**djavierbeats:** lol my rl middle name is 9 dif saints I mean catholics  
**djavierbeats:** but u kno lmao

Javier gives him his address—not too far from a TRAM stop. Otabek makes a cup of shitty hotel coffee, splashes water on his face to try to wake the hell up, and downs the coffee, which promptly scalds the roof of his mouth. Nothing to be done now. He finds his sunglasses and heads down to the lobby, but he’s still out of it, and he gets off when the doors open on the second floor. Nothing to be done, again—

It is _loud_ in the lobby; he finds the stairs by following the noise. Mostly feminine voices, mostly babbling in a mix of Catalan, Spanish, English, and… Russian? Bad Russian. And a number of them are repeating the same three syllables, while another set chants a single one, almost hypnotically—

“ _Yurochka! Yurochka! Yurochka!_ ”

_“JAY. JAY. JAY. JAY. JAY. JAY.”_

Otabek slips on his sunglasses to block the noise. He realizes as he does so that, first, he is clearly _far_ too tired to be a rational human, and second, that he’s wearing sunglasses, inside, after sunset. Like a first-class douchebag.

As opposed to an economy-class one?

He is also always surprised at how easily his trains of thought are derailed by tiredness.

With thematic resonance, a vaguely familiar but unplaceable voice is announcing in Russian-accented English, “Any guy who wears sunglasses on his head is _scum!_ ”

Otabek, who is probably at least half-scum if that’s the speaker’s criterion, comes down the stairs to find a crowd of girls, half wearing cat ears—this rings a bell, but possibly one from a nightmare—on one side of the lobby. Two upsettingly familiar figures are leaning against the opposite wall, and a smallish guy in a baseball jacket with a greyscale leopard-print body and an incongruous pink-and-white cat-ear headband shoved on over his black hood is pointing at them, spitting, “Find someone better, ugly-ass bitch—”

“Hey, no need to be so uppity!” laughs the tallest of the three in that tableau, and Otabek is nearly halfway across the lobby when JJ Leroy bellows—nearly everything he says is that volume, it’s like a medical condition or something— “Otabek! Where ya going?”

Otabek pauses, a single step from the revolving door that will let him _out_ of this madness, and exhales slowly through his mouth. He pulls off his sunglasses as he turns. _Minimize interaction. Minimize interaction and damn this friend-making venture_ —“Out.” _No shit._ “To eat.”

JJ snags Isabella Yang by the shoulders as the short guy, a few feet behind them, snatches the cat ears off his head and glares at them like he’s trying to set them on fire with hatred alone. Iz is looking well, at least. She’s as well-put-together as one could possibly hope of the girlfriend of one of the world’s top skaters _and_ _also_ a university pre-med just out of second-year finals; maybe a little strung-out on trans-Atlantic travel, but her hair is somehow free of flyaways and her red lipstick is, as always, perfect.

He and Feruza argued last week, after Feruza had perused Iz’s Facebook, over whether she’s gotten the color tattooed on or if she’s just that practiced.

“Eating alone?” says JJ. “You still weird like that?”

Before he can think of anything to say—because what the hell _do_ you say when your former rinkmate asks you to subscribe to his fucking newsletter and then tells you _you’re_ weird—JJ is within about a foot of his face and saying, “Want to join us for dinner?”

It’s been two years since he’s seen Iz in person, and he’s half-tempted by the offer just to talk about _Station Eleven_ with her—especially since she’s giving him the “please forgive him, he’s never needed to know how to be a person” look over her own boyfriend’s shoulder. Boyfriend? Fiancé? JJ is wearing a ring, prominently, the way he does everything prominently; Otabek can’t see Isabella’s hands, but if JJ’s added a gold band to his left-hand jewelry it’s probably not just because he likes the color.

This suggests that eating with them would really just be falling further into JJ hell.

“Thanks,” says Otabek, “but I’ll pass.” He starts to work on a less snippy elaboration about Javier and the bike, but in the process, he finally looks properly at the last person in this bizarre scene. Couple inches shorter than him, cat-ear headband in one hand, that leopard-print baseball jacket, black hoodie, skinny jeans, bright red sneakers, very blond hair. Blue-green eyes narrowed at him, level and assessing, like he’s working out whether Otabek is worth his disdain.

The body memory of being mid-growth spurt and extremely going-on-thirteen overwhelms the sleep deprivation and the airplane aches. He nearly stumbles. While standing still.

Plisetsky, _that_ Plisetsky, with the rage complex and the hell music who may have once threatened to break a dance studio of mirrors with Otabek’s face, looks back at him for two seconds before squinting and snarling in his low-pitched growl, “What’s with _you,_ asshole?”

Otabek attempts to formulate an answer this question, because the list of things _with him_ is increasing by the millisecond.

He fails utterly. So he about-faces out of the hotel.

It is not his smoothest moment.

He remembers suggesting to Feruza that Plisetsky’s manners may have improved since that training camp. It seems not.

The cold air is a blessing and the noise of a mid-December European city on a weekday evening provides a bracing counterpart to the all-day muffling of the airports and planes and cabs; it’s almost soothing after the cacophony that was the hotel lobby. He ducks into a bar near a TRAM stop a few blocks from the hotel, because that seems about as far as his idiot legs are willing to carry him for the moment. They don’t ask, but he’s filled with gratitude for the legitimate ID in his pocket that lets him actually be here—food is so much _easier_ now, at least in countries with sane drinking ages.

He gets a full-sugar cola—he’s low on calories for the day—and something along the lines of a club sandwich, no dressing, which he’s able to order in English because this is still tourism-land. After half the sandwich and half of another soda (this one sugar-free), he feels like he might survive another five hours, maybe, possibly, if the fog in his brain ever lifts. He checks his phone.

[December 9, 2014, 17:47 CET, Barcelona/21:47 ALMT, Almaty, Kazakhstan]

**feruzaaa:** my friend laila is one of plisetsky’s fangirls—she grew up in Moscow, can’t help it  
**feruzaaa:** anyway she sent me the following, verbatim:  
**feruzaaa:** “omg ur brother broke up a HUGE FIGHT  
between jj leroy  & yurochka (!!!!!!!!!!)  
in front of TONS OF FANS  
who were like SECONDS from a serious riot  
there were all these jj girls being shitty  
& the angels were gonna throw down  
ur bro is so cooool!  
(but not as cool as yurochka sorry!!!!!!!!!!)  
(lolol I am soooooooooo not even sorry!!!!!!!!!!)”  
**feruzaaa:** please explain.  
**feruzaaa:** if it can be explained, please explain. otash, I beg of you.

Otabek has to put the phone down on the bar and rest his face in his hands for a moment. His eyes feel like they’re made of wet cement, and he remembers why he is so glad he’s _not_ fan-friendly, and so grateful for Kazakhs in general being happy to keep him at arm’s length to avoid smudging. He picks up the other half of his sandwich while replying.

[18:06 CET/22:06 ALMT]

**otabek_a:** wtf is yurochka  
**feruzaaa:** brother.  
**feruzaaa:** we have Russian cousins.  
**otabek_a:** oh plisetsky? yuri yurochka ok right  
**otabek_a:** angels - seh dostent mean liek wings  & halos & shit does she  
**feruzaaa:** brother mine are you okay?  
**otabek_a:** could she explain why everyone in the damn lobby was wearing fckgn cat ears  
**otabek_a:** thought Id gotten slipped something I swear  
**otabek_a:** NOT THAT I HAVE ANY POINTS OF COMPARISON don’t do drugs  
**feruzaaa:** otash you’re like wrecked on jetlag  
**otabek_a:** so is your face

He swallows the last of the sandwich and sips the last of the soda. That fog—he feels heavy, but his head is light, like cotton candy.

**feruzaaa:** jav texted me - r u sure u shld get the bike tonight?  
**otabek_a:** are u impugning my  
**otabek_a:** fuck I don’t know what youre impugning but youre impugning it arent you  
**feruzaaa:** otash where are you rn  
**otabek_a:** in a bar  
**otabek_a:** NOT DRINKING im tired not suicidial  
**otabek_a:** eating food that was not prepackaged in mylar  
**feruzaaa:** okay. is it near the hotel?  
**otabek_a:** I cld roll back to the hotel  
**feruzaaa:** please do not.  
**otabek_a:** it was a joke im allowed to make them

He looks up and thinks. Is he allowed to make jokes? He’s usually happy to play the figurative straight man to Feruza, but that doesn’t mean he _can’t_ be the one to crack something that isn’t dry humor or black humor or a “wry observation” or whatever.

His phone is buzzing in his hands like a trapped housefly.

**feruzaaa:** laila explains that plisetsky’s fan club is called Yuri’s Angels  
**feruzaaa:** the cat ears are “bc yurochka looooooooooooves kitties!!!!!!!!!!!!”  
**feruzaaa:** and I quote “aand viktor nikiforov calls him kitten!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! he pretends he hates it but it’s soooooo cute!!!!!!!!!!!!!”  
**otabek_a:** these !!s feel like getting shot  
**otabek_a:** in the brain  
**otabek_a:** through the eyes  
**feruzaaa:** she’s kind of like that in person too  
**feruzaaa:** I mean shes sweet ilher but  
**feruzaaa:** so there wasn’t a fight?  
**otabek_a:** idk it was nosiy jj asked if I wanted to eat w him  & iz  
**otabek_a:** turned him down  
**feruzaaa:** oh you do still have judgment  
**otabek_a:** no! bc bike  
**otabek_a:** wait I mean I also have judgment probs.  & plisetsky said sth mildly aggressive  
**otabek_a:** but probly he’s jetlaggd too  
**feruzaaa:** “judgment probs”  
**otabek_a:** dearest sster  
**otabek_a:** you may be correct re bike  
**otabek_a:** being not the best of plans  
**feruzaaa:** stopped clock, twice a day, etc  
**feruzaaa:** go get some sleep, otash

He pulls himself together, a little, and starts crunching an ice cube from his glass as he calculates his tip. Probably more generous than typical, because he rounds everything up a euro, but his personal budget can take a little strain.

[18:24 CET]  
**otabek_a:** Javier—sorry, didn’t think jetlag was gonna hit me this bad, is it okay if I grab the bike tomorrow?   
**djavierbeats:** sure np! flextime I’ll be home whenever hahaaa  
**djavierbeats:** rest up dude, I wanna hear you Saturday  
  
Otabek stops himself from asking what’s important about Saturday because he just remembers, as he’s composing the text—the free skate is Saturday, the free skate and then a good club set in which to scream out his sorrows or howl in triumph, whichever. On his way back to the hotel, he feels slightly better—more grounded—but his head is still a whirr of static and “what’s with you, asshole?” and non-sequiturs and the hotel appears on his left almost too quickly. There’s a crowd of teenage girls outside (maybe the hotel staff put the fear of assorted gods into them), all wearing those goddamn cat ears; on seeing him, they burst into chatter. Loud chatter, that he can hear all too clearly.

“Do you think he knows Yurochka didn’t mean it?”

“Our kitten _sounded_ like he meant it! And really, what _is_ his problem?” The girl actually hisses.

“He’s just shy! I think it’s kind of cute!” That one puts her hands up like paws and makes a noise like “nyaaaa” in a falsetto that feels like a hot drill through the center of his forehead.

“Not as cute as Yurochka, but—”

“He’s _up himself_ , is what he is.”

Otabek finds himself standing still and clearing his throat. The girls fall silent.

“You realize,” he is saying in English, and his voice is doing that thing it does sometimes where it drops an octave and he sounds like he should be the competent, mannered, don’t-fuck-with-me sheriff in a Western and screw his proud Kazakh heritage, “that this hotel, the one you’re clustered in front of while meowing at each other like a bunch of half-assed furries, is full of people who strap knives to their feet and jump around on ice for fun, and that every single one of them could break your necks with one arm tied behind their back?”

They are gazing at him, and the front lines are backing slowly, crowding the rest of them. He sees only streetlight reflections off their sclerae.

“Goodnight, children,” he says, and goes inside.

When he wakes up the next morning, Feruza has texted him, “have a good day off, murderhero.”

Plisetsky isn’t the only one who can make himself multiple nicknames.

***

The group practice on Wednesday afternoon goes well; Otabek keeps to himself, which isn’t difficult, and his own skating feels clean and right. Not in the sparkling way it had at NHK, but he’s got time to pick up sparkles. If he feels they’re necessary.

He’s shaking hands with Karim and ignoring JJ’s cheerful bullhorn of a voice when he hears a man grumble-shout, in Russian, “Yuri, once more.”

The voice jerks him back to the middle of a growth spurt in that stifling ballet studio. He’s getting tired of revisiting the place.

He looks toward the rink. A heavyset older man at the boards has his back to him and Karim. Yuri Plisetsky stands on the other side of the boards, hair half-pulled back in an elastic. His back is to them as well, but his face—mulish—is turned to the left, in profile. He clicks his tongue against his teeth, apparently in response to his coach, and takes his sweet time about taking another drink, recapping his water bottle, and putting it down.

“Who’s Plisetsky’s coach?” Otabek asks in an undertone as Karim waits for him to get out of his skates.

“He’s got two. Only one showed today—Yakov Feltsman.”

Feltsomething, who Gulnara had ripped into over rigidity in coaching styles and lack of imagination, lack of _vision_ , when it came to Otabek. “Who’s the other?” he asks, cleaning his second skate blade with more care than it really needs.

“Lilia Baranovskaya. She was a principle with the Bolshoi. Feltsman’s ex-wife. He brought her in this season—ballet training for Plisetsky.”

The Kardashian lady. “Do you know how long he’s been with Feltsman?”

“Why, looking to jump ship?”

“Might want to check out that paranoia, Karim.”

His coach laughs dryly. “Altin, you told me your own self when you said you wanted to go back to Almaty—you’d stay with me and with the rink until you were certain Feruza could handle herself without you having to intervene. I have a distinct memory of your bewailing having to call in favors with the Kazakh hockey team if we stayed in Montreal. I couldn’t be paranoid about you if I tried.” He pauses for a moment, and adds, “Plus, you’d never get anywhere with those two. Feltsman has been coaching Plisestky since the kid touched ice. They’re going on ten years.”

Otabek places his skates in his designated locker and stretches. “Interesting.”

“Any reason you’re digging?” Karim asks as they both head out of the arena space and towards the conference center exit.

“Just curious. Feltsman led that camp in St. Petersburg—”

“Ah, that’s right! And Gulnara got into it with him. The coaching world is still in awe of her, I hope you know. So, plans for the rest of your free time?”

“Uh.” Otabek checks his phone as they get outside; it’s early afternoon. “Well, there’s a guy I’m borrowing a motorcycle from, and he wants to talk about maybe DJing a set at a club after the free skate, so I have to figure that out. You?”

“I’ll be around,” Karim says with an offhand shrug. He’s probably developed a museum tour for himself. “Check out the Park Güell once you get the bike,” he adds. “You’d appreciate it. Logistics—you’re smart, you’re eighteen, the world is your oyster. No formal curfew. But let me know if you won’t be at the hotel before midnight so I can tell you you’re an idiot.”

Otabek salutes. Karim returns it and takes off on his own, while Otabek negotiates with Google Maps and texts Javier.

[December 10, 2014, 13:28 CET]

**otabek_a:** can pick up the bike in about 30 minutes—is it a good time for you?  
**djavierbeats:** perfect! hahaha ill tell u more abt the rock night if u want  
**otabek_a:** sure, would love to hear! I’ll text you if I get lost, otherwise see you soon.

Javier, a man about his own height with dreadlocks gathered into a ponytail, is beaming as he opens the door to his apartment just about half an hour later. “The elder Altin!” he says. “Excellent to meet you at last. Want to see the bike? She’s around the back—”

The bike is in a corner of the apartment building’s garage, and it’s in perfect condition. “Sweet as of two hours ago when I checked, on Feruza’s vigorous prompting,” Javier says. “Went for a spin to the beach and back. Tank’s full, helmet—helmets? Want a spare? I certainly won’t be needing it while you’ve got her.” He pats the bike to indicate “her.”

“Sure, why not,” says Otabek. “How do you want to arrange handoff? I’m in the city ‘til sometime middle of the fifteenth—”

“Come on up and we’ll work it out, unless you have to be somewhere?”

“Nope. Free ‘til morning,” he says as he follows Javier back around to the front and up two flights of stairs to Javier’s floor.

Javier details his arrangement with a nightclub in the Poblenou neighborhood. It’s not Sidecar or the Magic Club, but it’s a good-sized space with solid turnout and an ace speaker system, and the rock night has apparently been a standing tradition for half a decade. Hour-long sets on the half-hour, no themes unless there’s a live act, and the DJs aren’t expected to be talky characters unless they’re known for it. “I’d say coordinate with the others, but honestly, it’s an eight-hour schedule; if anyone gets in a snit about hearing the same song twice they can go somewhere else.”

“What’s the vibe? Like, if I play something weird—”

“Define ‘weird.’”

“Top 40–industrial mashup?”

He waves a hand dismissively. “If anyone heckles, just crank the volume. You’re in the booth, you’re in charge. Feruza vouched for your taste, so _I_ trust you, and I run the damn thing. Oh, and free drinks for you for the night. Friends—we’ll negotiate. Right, and the place is 18-and-up, no exceptions.”

Otabek nods. “All right. I’m in. If I medal that night, you think the venue could take the mob?”

“The more, the merrier.” Javier looks him over. “Likely, isn’t it? Medaling?”

He pauses. “We’ll see. Not going to jinx it.”

Five minutes later he’s riding the borrowed bike through Sant Martí, generally aiming for the hotel. He’s taking his time, stopping when he sees cool stuff, but he figures it’s worth figuring out where he’s going to leave the bike when he comes back for the night sooner rather than later.

He takes a break for lunch at some café, where he orders by pointing and apologizing in Spanish a lot, then heads to a nearby park—a little green space, benches, a fountain that’s been turned off but the giant frog sculpture in the middle looks pleased with itself. It’s ridiculously nice out, especially for December.

With his phone, earbuds, cloud storage for music, and a notebook, he works out two different playlists for Saturday. One’s for if he medals; the other is not.

By three-something, just as the shadows get deep enough for him to feel a little chilly, he’s trimmed both to within seconds of 60 minutes total, at least on paper. He’s not planning anything really flashy, just a couple cuts to maintain momentum. If the whim takes him, he has a few spots marked where he could show off for both sets.

At the hotel, he talks to the concierge, who produces a pretty twentysomething named Sofia who speaks flawless English and apparently runs everything to do with the parking garage. She walks him through the indoor entrance to the garage and points out a handful of spots where a bike will fit, before doing something clever with his key card so that he gets automatic access to the garage _without_ getting billed for a not-quite parking spot. Otabek isn’t certain if this is just her being nice or him being mildly famous, but either way he’s not complaining.

As they’re wrapping up, they both hear a clamor of girls’ voices. Sofia rolls her eyes upward. “Betting my sister’s one of those,” she mutters, as if Otabek is in on a joke. “She’s sixteen. Spent the last two weeks arranging, I don’t even know, screenings between our mother and her Internet friends, so that Mum would let her come to this meetup or whatever. They’re all part of this fan group for one of you skaters—you’re seniors, singles, right?”

“Yeah. Skating Friday and Saturday.”

“Well, break a leg. Is that what you say for skating? Best luck, in any case. So my sister, _she_ went and ratted to her Internet fan chat that we’re the official hotel, and they’re doing this… I don’t know, they’re _convening_ right out front.”

“Hm,” says Otabek. “Well, they’re not here for me.”

“Oh, no, it’s a Russian guy. She texted me last night about some Canadian and _his_ fan group—”

He involuntarily and derisively snorts. Her eyes widen.

“You all _know_ each other, I forgot—”

“I’m not offended,” he says quickly. “Not like I’m in the fan group. Of either.”

Sofia flattens one palm against her chest and fakes a dramatic sigh. “Goodness. Close one.”

She gives him excellent directions to Park Güell. It’s apparently difficult to miss, but no point in skimping on information.

Otabek has to circle the hotel block, through the weird no-man’s-land of dumpsters and loading docks that makes up all the hotel’s logistics, to get to a street that’ll point him in the right direction, which involves skirting about five alleys in the _wrong_ direction before he lucks out with the sixth. As he heads down the alley, he knows he’s on the right track: he hears girls’ voices, indistinct but growing louder, even over the bike’s motor.

He’s halfway to the main street when a figure darts around the corner, scurries a few yards _up_ the alley in his direction, and ducks into an alcove, part of the hotel’s façade. The person is small, wearing mostly black under a light jacket entirely inappropriate for winter, even in Barcelona. After a second, they let their head fall back to the wall, and the sun catches on a shock of pale blond hair.

The first girl wearing cat ears comes into view. She’s about as far from Yuri Plisetsky as Otabek is.

But Otabek has a bike.

“Yuri,” he finds himself half-shouting over the bike’s engine as he brakes. Hiding from teenage girls and looking terrified is one thing when you’re a normal teenage boy, but it’s another thing entirely when you’re a really famous one; he gathers that Plisetsky isn’t quite feeling like an ad-hoc fan convention.

Plisetsky turns toward him, wide-eyed. “Get on,” Otabek says, and unclips the second helmet from around the strap of his messenger bag.

A crowd of cat-eared girls rounds the corner. They immediately start shrieking Russian endearments and pointing at Plisetsky, who is apparently paralyzed.

He holds the helmet out to him. Plisetsky takes it and otherwise remains frozen, staring.

Otabek remembers belatedly that he had never actually introduced himself in the lobby, and JJ had been too busy being JJ to be useful, or to let Iz intervene with manners. He pulls off his sunglasses and makes eye contact with Yuri.

One of the girls, for some reason, has decided to narrate. She yells, “It’s Otabek Altin from Kazakhstan!”

Plisetsky’s expression relaxes marginally. Recognition, or just resignation to his fate of being eaten alive by piranha fans?

Either way, it’s time for his own exit. Otabek puts his glasses back on and asks, “Are you coming or not?”

Which apparently does the trick, because Plisetsky pushes his hood down, straps on the helmet, and hops onto the seat behind Otabek without a word.

Otabek tests out the bike’s turning radius at speed, because he can—Plisetsky grabs handfuls of his jacket—and heads back up the alley. He’ll find another way.


	6. like walking on

[December 10, 2014, 16:14 CET, Barcelona, Spain/20:14 ALMT, Almaty, Kazakhstan]

 **feruzaaa:** “HERO OF KAZAKHSTAN KIDNAPS RUSSIAN FAIRY ON MOTORBIKE”?  
**feruzaaa:** laila screamed at me??? in the middle of rehearsal? abt my “lout of a brother” corrupting the plisetsky creature??

After Yuri finally gets on the bike, it’s too loud for any conversation; Otabek just yells, “Heading to Park Güell,” and keeps on his route. Twenty-five minutes and two sharp buzzes from his phone in his jacket pocket later, he parks the bike streetside, a few hundred feet from the coolest entrance (according to Sofia). Yuri Plisetsky jumps off the bike, landing soundlessly, and takes off the helmet, looking around like he’s not sure he’s still on the right planet.

“Here, give it,” says Otabek. Yuri passes him the helmet without looking at him; Otabek attaches both it and his own to the bike’s helmet locks, then starts walking.

Yuri trails after him in silence until they get to the actual entrance, which is—impressive. Otherworldly, particularly in the golden late-afternoon light: broad steps divided into two flights by islands of greenery, tiled walls topped with scalloped crenellations to either side. Two landings up, there’s a bordered platform where an alligator-like sculpture in hallucinatory stripes crouches over a fountain, open-mouthed.

“Where are we?” Yuri asks when they’ve climbed to the first landing. Maybe it’s nerves, but he finally sounds his age.

“Park Güell. This is La Escalinata del Dragón. The Dragon’s Staircase.”

“ _Nice_.” He breaks into a sprint, leaps onto the half-wall around the gator fountain, and takes a selfie with the sculpture, throwing a peace sign. Then another of the sculpture on its own, and a third with his arm around its neck like it’s his best friend, and a fourth with his arm in its mouth and an exaggerated look of terror on his face.

Otabek takes the chance to check his own phone. Four texts from Feruza, the most recent two from just a few minutes ago.

[16:32 CET/20:32 ALMT]

 **feruzaaa:** pls update, lout (?????) ???????  
**feruzaaa:** symphony is taking a break  & laila is using hers to GLARE AT ME

[16:35 CET/20:35 ALMT]

 **otabek_a:** situation developing. kidnapping was more of an assisted escape.  
**otabek_a:** and I am not a lout.  
**feruzaaa:** ASSISTED ESCAPE  
**otabek_a:** I am going to hang out with the Russian fairy. may be minimally reachable.  
**feruzaaa:** YOU ARE GOING TO EXPLAIN THIS  
**otabek_a:** yes. later, promise.

The lack of immediate text notifications confirms that Feruza has gotten the message to leave him alone for a bit—or that her break is over. Yuri, finished posing with the alligator, has backtracked down the steps toward Otabek and now stands a few feet away on the landing, watching him as he sticks his phone back in his bag and his hands in his pockets.

Yuri’s eyes narrow. “Do you have somewhere to be?” he says. His voice holds a challenge.

He shrugs. “Nah. Catching up with my sister.”

“Why are we here?” he asks, suspicious.

“Rank tourism,” says Otabek. “Sorry about the hijacking. But if you’ve got plans—”

His eyes go round. “That’s not what I meant!” Yuri says, rather more fervent than seems warranted. “I’m fine here!”

“Okay,” he replies easily. “Want to look around?”

“Uh. Sure.” Yuri glances around. “Up somewhere high?”

“Up, then.” Otabek starts climbing. Yuri follows.

Once they emerge on the piazza, Yuri spins in place, arms spread. “This place is _cool_ ,” he says vehemently. “Like Gaudi got the run of the city, or half of it or whatever, and was like, screw it, I’m going to turn this place into _Mars_. With fucking _history_. _Weird_ history.”

They come to a stop, leaning against the half-wall of one of the little scooped-out spaces overlooking the staircase. “This entire city is weird,” says Yuri. “Like. A lot of Europe can’t figure out what century it is, but Barcelona can’t pick what universe it’s from. It’s cool.”

He makes a noise like agreement and digs his hands further into his pockets.

The park is gilded with sunlight. It’s quiet, except for a slight breeze; the city noise is dulled by distance and elevation.

Yuri breaks the silence with a sudden, “So.” He clears his throat, which doesn’t change its gravelliness in the least. “You’re acting like we know each other. Which, I mean, I’m not complaining, that was cool with the motorcycle escape, but like.”

Otabek waits for him to finish his thought, until he realizes that “but like” is it. “Well, we were both in Yakov Feltsman’s 2009 summer training camp.”

“Really!” Yuri replies. It sounds like a challenge again, like he thinks Otabek is trying to put one over on him. “I don’t remember that.”

His personal sob story unravels in his mind: not being able to keep up with the soon-to-be juniors, getting kicked down to the nowhere-near-juniors track full of pale bird-boned kids between six and eleven, which, when he was five months from turning thirteen, had felt like being stuck among kindergarteners. Getting glared at by some squirt who looked like he’d been through the wars at age ten was an additional flavor of hell.

Another was that, in the two weeks before he’d had his epiphany that he was not actually chained to the barre, that same little squirt had been called upon no less than twice daily by Feltsman to demonstrate correct form. _And,_ each time, he’d retained that _look_ , as if he were gritting his teeth against his demons and _fighting_ through this, even this thing it seemed he was purpose-built for, and Otabek had half admired his poise and half wanted to shake him and demand what demons he could possibly be fighting, considering the effortlessness of his perfect form.

He condenses this. By a great deal. As the phrase “eyes of a soldier” escapes him, he reflects: concise, clear, accurate, less insulting than “you looked like you were trying to talk yourself out of mauling everyone the entire time.” He notes Yuri’s guarded expression from the corner of his eye.

Yuri blinks on hearing the soldier comparison and mutters the word like he’s trying it on for size. He turns to face the horizon. The breeze picks up and plays with his hair before he says quietly, “I guess—I’d just moved rinks, from Moscow to St. Petersburg.” Otabek remembers just enough from his early-season forum surfing to amend this mentally: “moving rinks” had also meant “leaving my only family.” At _ten_. “I was…desperate. Decided I wouldn’t complain until I was good enough.”

He’s familiar with that desperation: when he and Gulnara finally admitted to themselves after returning from St. Petersburg that, if he was _really_ going to get anywhere, it wasn’t going to be out of Almaty, at least not directly. The move to Ufa within months of the camp’s completion. Karim taking over in Ufa, then heading to the US, and then to Quebec, and Otabek followed without seeing Almaty for four years, aside from two weeks each summer, and he hadn’t even realized how much he loved his home until he came back to it.

He decides not to mention the mirrors threat.

“Why did you talk to me?” says Yuri, like this is the thing that’s really bugging him. “I’m your rival. Aren’t I?”

 _What does that have to do with anything?_ But then, if Yuri thinks like that—well, it explains more than it doesn’t.

He fudges his answer. The decision to offer Yuri an out had been a whim, after half a season of warily anticipating—secondhand dreading—how hard this prodigy was going to crash when he finally hit his wall. Although he supposes he’s projecting, based only on what he remembers of his own crash. “I thought we were a lot alike, that’s all.” The past tense isn’t quite wrong.

Yuri looks unconvinced.

In for a penny. “So are we gonna be friends, or not?” says Otabek.

He blinks. And shrugs casually, but his face is doing something much more complex: self-consciousness, mild surprise, pleasure, still that edge of suspicion. “Yeah, why not. Friends.”

They shake on it.

Immediately afterward, Yuri grimaces. “I’m gonna fuck up,” he says warningly. “I’m telling you now.”

“What?”

He pulls a much more exaggerated face, sharp features contorting into something like a gargoyle’s. “You don’t—I mean, I’m not… good at people.”

“I’d kind of gathered.”

“From _what_?” Yuri demands.

“Well. You called me an asshole because I looked at you. Yesterday.”

He bites his lip, thoughtful. “Oh. I did.”

And in for a pound: “And in Yakov Feltsman’s camp, you told me to quit ballet before my face broke the mirrors.”

“I did _not_ ,” he snaps, and then considers. “Although I wouldn’t put it past me.”

“So, fine,” says Otabek. “You’re not good at people. Noted. The press thinks the same of me.”

“Sure. Okay.” Yuri sort of half-nods, half-shrugs in acquiescence. Then he shivers and announces, “I’m cold. And hungry. This—” he gestures broadly, encompassing the entirety of Park Güell—“is awesome. But let’s go somewhere with food. Inside.”

“Know anywhere?”

“The Internet does.”

Twenty minutes later, they’re in a cafe with herbal tea and Catalonian mini-pizzas, plain décor, friendly staff and, blessedly, no satellite radio station.

They’re both quiet through their first mini-pizzas— _coques_ —before Otabek says, “Here’s what I know about you: you’re Russian, you skate, and you’re bad at people, by your admission. What else?”

“Unfair,” replies Yuri. “All I know about you is you’re Kazakh and you were third at Worlds. And you ride motorcycles. So you should tell _me_.”

“I asked first.”

“ _Ugh_. Fair.”

“So what else?”

“I have a cat,” Yuri says instantly, and beams. “Here, her name’s Potya, I’ll show you—” He pulls out his phone, and after five minutes of skimming through photographs of a fluffy round-eyed black-and-white cat with an absurd assortment of collars, lands on a photo of himself mugging with a semi-abstract sculpture of a man sitting on a bench. “Oh, right, this guy. Golden Spin a few days ago. Last weekend? Whatever. Zagreb. Have you been?”

“In juniors, yeah. Nice city. You’ve been to Ostrava, yeah? Czech Skate?”

“Not as cool as Prague,” says Yuri. “With the marionettes. So good, they’re so creepy, I got a crap one and hid it in Mila’s locker—Mila’s at my rink, Babicheva, she’s singles—and she _screamed_ , I got video—”

The conversation flows from travel to music—Yuri likes J-rock and K-pop and indie stuff and a handful of electronic acts, plus 80s metal for the outfits, and he has never been to a live show—to classwork to books and back to cats, because cats are good, and why not more about music, and puzzle games versus videogames, which leads Yuri to start attempting to explain the plot of a videogame he’s not actually finished with, including gesticulation, imitations, and scrawled sketches on napkins, down to character genealogies.

Time slips away the same way it does with Feruza or a good book or a particularly solid DJing set. Otabek is surprised to note that the sky is dark when Yuri glances out the window and heaves a sudden, extraordinarily deep sigh.

“Look, I’m sorry in advance,” he says, which is all the warning Otabek gets before Katsuki Yuuri, Viktor Nikiforov— _Katsuki Yuuri_ , who looks absurdly adorable in glasses with his hair flopping over his forehead, _and Viktor Nikiforov_ —and two Japanese women, who seem both rather overwhelmed and as if they know Katsuki very well, descend upon them.

He just has time to note the frantic look on the barista’s face—there are exactly two other tables in the café, and its closing time is both posted on the wall and in about ten minutes—before Nikiforov beams directly and personally at Otabek. It’s like a spotlight, the warmth and glowiness of it, except the spotlight is also wearing a cashmere sweater that probably cost more than his rent. “Otabek Altin! It’s wonderful to see you again!” he exclaims, like he actually means it. “Have you befriended our Yurio?”

“Don’t _call_ me that _,_ ” snaps Yuri.

Nikiforov pats Yuri on the head and receives a whack on the arm for it, which he blissfully ignores. Instead, he glances at the barista, glances at the wall, and then beams at her, too. “Come on, we’re crowding this place,” he says, voice pitched so she can hear easily, and Otabek can see her face relax, “and I know a good restaurant a bit of a walk away. Yuuri? Would you see if the others would like to join us for a proper meal?”

“See, it becomes difficult,” says one of the two women to Otabek in accented English, between barely-suppressed giggles. She has a row of piercings marching up her ear. “My brother is the older, so he is Yuuri, and this one—” she nods at Yuri— “is Yurio.”

Yuri scowls.

“He does not like it,” the woman—Katsuki’s _sister?_ —observes solemnly, and then grins at Otabek before she breaks into laughter.

“How do you know Katsuki’s sister?” he mutters in Russian to Yuri, still lost, only partly because Nikiforov is now herding all of them out of the café and talking about this bigger restaurant, which sounds like a delight, doesn’t it, Yuuri, or maybe he’s talking to Yuri, but Yuri is ignoring him flat-out in favor of answering Otabek.

“Mari,” he murmurs back, also in Russian. “I followed Nikiforov to Japan in the spring.”

“You—what?”

“Got my SP choreography out of it,” Yuri says, as if these are two completely ordinary sentences to say next to each other, and adds, “The other’s Minako, the Katsudon’s ballet—”

“The what?”

“Um,” says Yuri illuminatingly. “Katsuki’s ballet instructor. She’s okay. So’s Mari. I guess.” He shrugs, as if that’s just all there is to know about how a Russian skater barely out of juniors knows minutiae regarding the not-even-relatives of a competitor who’s eight years older and located on the other end of the continent. Feruza was right, months ago; there are stories here, more than Yuri can explain—even if he wanted to—under his breath on what turns out to be a three-block walk.

At the bigger restaurant, Nikiforov gets a table for eight, which leaves Otabek wondering what he’s missing, again, until Phichit Chulanont and Christophe Giacometti appear. This is almost a distraction from the twisting of his stomach induced by sitting next to Viktor Nikiforov like he deserves to be there. Giacometti sparkles at him from across the table like he _does_ deserve to be there, before he licks his lips and winks hugely, and Otabek is too thrown to dredge up surprise over it.

“Why did we all have to get together,” Yuri says in a flat undertone to Otabek. “Why.”

He shrugs in response, although he’s not complaining, just as vast quantities of food are being placed on the table. The group settles into a shouty, happy tangle of passing plates and jokes in three or four languages and, because there’s Chulanont, camera phone flashes.

Otabek focuses on the food and speaks little; Nikiforov introduces him to the table at large as “Yurio’s friend,” to which he gives a wave as Yuri mutters, “Fuck you, old man.”

Yuri is otherwise stonily silent, and Otabek isn’t quite certain whether it’d be a good idea to ask Yuri for a primer on what the hell exactly is happening right now if he wants to keep all his extremities attached. He’s aware that the situation boils down to serving himself off several platters of unknown, delicious, and apparently training diet-compliant food (Giacometti and Nikiforov had handled the ordering) with four of his five competitors, a living breathing legend, the sister of his skating crush of the season, and a ballet teacher, but the sheer bizarre energy of the rest of the people at the table is nearly overwhelming.

Then Katsuki Yuuri pipes up to say how nice it is that they’re all together and having fun. Of _course_ he’s a sweetheart, _in addition_ to being able to skate like he’s made of sin. Katsuki adds something about how far he’s come, having been too nervous at last year’s GPF banquet to even speak to Nikiforov, which is heart-melting, but has the unexpected effect of making Nikiforov spit out his beer and stare at him in consternation. And then Giacometti mentions champagne. And dancing.

During last year’s GPF, the actual event, Otabek had been packing up his room in Montreal.

He pays very close attention to his food until Yuri growls, “That was _disgusting._ And _I_ got dragged into a dance-off. Humiliating.”

Katsuki looks shocked, even before Giacometti begins reminiscing fondly about pole-dancing in his underwear—although, given that it’s Giacometti, he could be talking about any given Tuesday. Nikiforov notes cheerfully that he has video, as does Giacometti, who shows something on his phone to Chulanont, who exclaims something in Japanese, at which point Katsuki starts freaking out.

The underlying story is probably very funny and important to this select group of people, but Otabek is not one of them. Because he had been moving his life across the Atlantic. He fixes his eyes on the tines of his fork.

Yuri pokes him in the ribs, which makes him startle, and mutters, “Doing okay?”

“Yeah,” he says, because answering otherwise would just make everything weird—weirder—and glances at his phone.

[19:38 CET/23:38 ALMT]

 **feruzaaa:** PHICHIT CHULANONT JUST TAGGED U IN A ZILLION INSTAGRAMSS  
**feruzaaa:** WITH LIKE A MILLION PEOPLE?????

Before he can think of a reply, Chulanont _yells_ , to the entire restaurant, that his best friend has gotten married. The place bursts into applause just as Katsuki Yuuri jumps to his feet and cries out a denial, red-faced, and Nikiforov is smiling like a cat and resting his chin on one hand angled exactly so that the restaurant lights gleam off the gold band on his right ring finger, and Katsuki freezes and scans the room—all those eyes on him—like a frightened bunny who happens to be wearing a matching ring. Because it looks like something to applaud, Otabek slips his phone in his pocket and claps along, but mostly just hopes Katsuki isn’t going to have an actual panic attack, and it is _too_ fucking loud, and Yuri is making gagging noises.

“Don’t get the wrong idea,” Nikiforov says, and by the power of Nikiforov the table falls silent. His voice is pitched playfully, but that could mean anything, because _he’s Viktor Nikiforov_. “This is an engagement ring. We’re only getting married once he’s won a gold medal.”

Katsuki’s face drains entirely of color. Otabek starts to say something to break the tension, but his brain blanks out in sympathetic embarrassment.

Giacometti raises an eyebrow.

Chulanont’s eyes widen admiringly.

Yuri outright snarls.

JJ, apparently just arrived with Iz on his arm as Nikiforov explained—improvised, considering Katsuki’s response—the ring thing, makes his presence known by bellowing like a foghorn about marrying Iz, because obviously he’s going to win all the gold medals.

And suddenly their check is paid—by Nikiforov?—and everyone is filing out, past JJ and Iz. Otabek catches her eye and half-shrugs; she returns the gesture and mouths _later?_ and he nods.

And then it’s over.

Yuri hangs back from the rest of the group, and since Otabek supposes he’s Yuri’s ride, he keeps pace until Yuri half-collapses on a bench and leans his head back. “ _Fuck_. I’m so sorry.” He says it in English.

“It’s fine,” Otabek says, and sits as well.

It is very easy to be silent in Yuri’s presence, he notes, in the middle of a city sometime after dark and after the cacophony of that restaurant.

Then his brain kicks in, a couple minutes later. Why is Yuri apologizing? “Sorry for what?”

“ _Them_ ,” replies Yuri, with a broad sweep of his arm that nearly takes out an innocent pedestrian. “Mostly the old man and the Katsud—I mean, Katsuki.”

“ _What_ are you calling him? ‘The—’”

“Oh. Katsudon—it’s Japanese food. Breaded pork cutlet—that’s _tonkatsu_ —with egg over rice. It’s Katsuki’s favorite and he gets all weird about it and only eats it when he wins stuff and…I dunno.” Yuri kicks at the sidewalk. “It sounds kind of stupid explaining.” Then, petulant, “But _I’m_ Yuri.”

“How do you know this?” Otabek asks, bewildered.

“I said. I chased Nikiforov to Japan in the spring, when he decided he was gonna coach Katsuki. And bugged him until he choreographed my short program. Like he’d _said_ he would. Whatever. Anyway.”

“Wait, you—”

“I’m trying to _apologize_ here,” Yuri interrupts, exasperated. “The two of them, the old man and Katsuki, they’re a lot of… of… they’re just a lot, and they’re _disgusting_ being all over each other. And you’re cool, but you’re not—like, you’re not Nikiforov, you don’t feed off people’s attention and stir them up for fun, I can’t believe he sprang that on Katsuki, but because we were hanging out you got…” He gestures incomprehensibly. “What did you say earlier? Hijacked. Into _that_.”

He considers. He ate well, and for free, and while the dynamics were odd, it was interesting to observe, and maybe he’s feeling a little social whiplash, but the free food makes up for it. “It was fine,” he says.

“Okay. Good.” Yuri de-slouches, straightening on the bench and finger-combing his hair. “Good. Want to go shopping? The Internet says Barcelona has this super great shopping district and I don’t know if I’m gonna have time after—”

Otabek’s phone pings. Three times, in rapid succession. “Uh. One sec?”

[20:22 CET/December 11, 2014, 00:22 ALMT]

 **feruzaaa:** VIKTOR NIKIFOROV AND KATSUKI YUURI ANNOUNCED THEIR ENGAGEMENT AND YOU WERE THERE  
**feruzaa:** YOU WERE THERE SITTING BETWEEN YOUR KIDNAPPED RUSSIAN FAIRY AND VIKTOR NIKIFOROV WHEN THEY SPILLED  
**feruzaa:** EXPLAIN YOURSELF

“Popular, huh,” says Yuri. “The Internet lies.”

“It’s my sister,” Otabek replies. “Um, it’s not urgent, I can—”

[20:23 CET/0:23 ALMT]

 **feruzaaa:** OTASH I SEE YOUR READ NOTIF I WILL COME OVER THERE

He’s beginning to make some kind of apology for rudeness when Yuri announces, “I’m going to buy hot cider from that stall. While you talk to your sister.” He jumps to his feet and zips off.

Somewhat to Otabek’s disappointment, because he has no idea how to explain the entirety of the restaurant thing over text.

[20:24 CET/0:24 ALMT]

 **otabek_a:** I already said it wasn’t a kidnap.  
**feruzaaa:** EXPLAIN  
**feruzaaa:** sry i forgot allcaps explain? pls?  
**otabek_a:** yuri was about to get snared into this whole thing with his fan club so I gave him an out.  
**otabek_a:** and we hung out. and we were at that dinner because nikiforov and katsuki saw him and asked us both along.  
**feruzaaa:** !!!!!!!!!  
**otabek_a:** and katsuki invited giacometti and chulanont.  
**feruzaaa:** ENGAGEMENT?????????  
**otabek_a:** I have literally no idea.  
**feruzaaa:** w8 u called him yuri  
**otabek_a:** I did.  
**feruzaaa:** ARE YOU FRIENDS???  
**otabek_a:** we are friendly.  
**feruzaaa:** OMG  
**otabek_a:** wait. isn’t it after midnight for you?  
**otabek_a:** feru, go to bed.  
**feruzaaa:** you are NO FUN  
**otabek_a:** it’s a school night. goodnight, favorite sister!

He puts his phone away just as Yuri appears carrying two cups. “Is your sister older or younger?” he demands. “What’s her name? Does she skate too? No, she doesn’t,” he answers himself, “I’d have heard of her. What does she do?”

Otabek provides Feruza’s vastly abridged biography (“Classical music is boring, I don’t get it,” says Yuri at one point, and Otabek realizes he would pay good money to watch him say so to Feruza) while they drink their cider and walk back three blocks to the bike. Yuri says again, “This shopping place, it’s got like tons of local designers plus _designer-_ designers, but—I mean, if shopping isn’t your thing—”

“Sounds good,” says Otabek, who, if he’s being honest with himself, hasn’t _shopped_ for clothing since he last needed a good biking jacket—coincidentally, also the first time he needed a good biking jacket. When he’s not training, he lives in t-shirts bought three to a pack and one of three pairs of skinny jeans in different washes.

But he just ate dinner with five internationally ranked skaters, so apparently it is a day for the unusual.

Besides, he’s enjoying hanging out with Yuri.

Even though Yuri’s weird.

They ride through the city to the Gothic Quarter shopping district of Portal de l’Àngel. It’s packed with people, the way things get in the few weeks before the winter holidays, and the place is glowing with fairy lights and intricate window displays.

In two hours, Yuri assembles two full outfits from five different stores—with Otabek’s input; he stages a miniature fashion show in each boutique—including a ridiculous-but-it-somehow-works ensemble of burgundy satin, black fake stretch leather, and a shirt mostly comprising holes. “You _need_ to get something,” says Yuri. “Come on. You’re in this awesome place in Barcelona and it’s the holidays, almost. If you don’t, I’ll get your coach to give me your measurements and buy you a whole outfit. And make you wear it. To the banquet.”

He blinks. “Could you do that?”

“I _would_ ,” Yuri vows.

He finds a deadstock Soundgarden t-shirt in a vintage shop. “Okay?” he says, showing it after he’s done at the register of this little rocker place with walls plastered in metal posters. It’s ridiculously expensive for a t-shirt, but at least he’ll wear it.

Yuri heaves a sigh. “Adequate,” he replies, “I _guess_.”

“Good. I found this too. For your blazer thing.” He hands over an overwrought cross on a chain, all gold-plate and oversized links.

“Oh _man_ , it’s _perfect_ , I’m going to look like such gangster club trash, this is so _good_ —” Yuri is beaming, before a thought strikes him and he quirks his eyebrows, questioning. “Wait, did you buy it?”

“It was two euro.”

“It’s _great_ ,” he says, eyes shining. “Are you tired? I’m tired.”

They make it back to the hotel just before midnight; both of Yuri’s coaches are sitting in the lobby.

“Oh, shit,” Yuri says. “I probably forgot to text, no, I totally forgot to—what’s your number? Or, no, give me—” He grabs Otabek’s phone right out of his jacket pocket, thumbs at the screen for some moments, and waits until he hears a beep from his own pocket, then hands the phone back to Otabek. “Okay. See you.” He straightens his jacket, sets his shoulders, and sets off toward his coaches at a march.

Otabek looks at his own phone while he’s in the elevator. The messaging app is open.

_Conversation with my coolest frend (yuri_plisetsky)_

[22:53 CET]

 **otabek_a:** i am otabek altin i am cool n ride a motorbike n resq ppl from weirdos n now yuri has my # so GET REDY TO ROKK


	7. loss; it's a win

[December 11, 2014, 10:37 CET, Barcelona, Spain/14:37 ALMT, Almaty, Kazakhstan]

**feruzaaa:** i know ur not competing 2day but w/e gl regardlesssss  
**feruzaaa:** enjoy hanging out with yuri  
**otabek_a:** ? group practice isn’t “hanging out”.  
**feruzaaa:** omg think outside the isu schedule

At dinner, after the juniors’ events are over for the day, Yuri Plisetsky drops into a chair next to Otabek holding a bowl of pasta salad with chicken. Otabek notes the contradictions inherent in undergoing something like six months of training with a former Bolshoi prima ballerina and Yuri’s ability to make sitting down look like the collapse of one of those little wooden dolls held together with elastic string.

“Come watch ladies’ singles later,” he says without preamble, and shoves a forkful of pasta into his face. “Also Lilia wants to kill you.”

In the attempt to parse both sentences and their relationship to each other, Otabek apparently fails to consider what his face is doing—which means it’s doing nothing, which most people interpret negatively—and Yuri adds after a second, “Not for real. I mean as much as Lilia ever doesn’t want to kill people. But she thinks your skating style should be taken out back and shot.”

“What?” he finally says.

“She’s all—” Yuri’s voice goes deeper and grander. “‘Artistry is _fluidity_ , it is _calligraphy_ , it is not these _angles_ and this _linearity_ , this…’ I mean,” and his voice returns to normal, “she’s talking bullshit, as usual. It was just funny.”

“When has your coach seen me skate?”

Yuri rolls his eyes as he chews another mouthful of pasta. “Practice today, moron.”

“Which… inspired criticism?”

“Nah, I asked her. You coming to ladies’ SPs?”

The abrupt transition throws Otabek again. And why had Yuri asked his coach for her opinion on _his_ skating? “I don’t know any of the—”

“Whatever. I do. Mila’s competing.” Yuri pauses, shoves another forkful down, and says, eyebrows furrowed, “You’d like her. I think. And I don’t think she could lift you. Might be fun to see her try.”

“Lift?”

He sighs heavily. “When she wants to be annoying she carry-lifts me. One-handed. And laughs.”

Otabek considers this—he looked up Mila after he got to his room the night before and recognized her, a pretty redhead who generally picks good classical pieces, and the mental image of her holding Yuri at arm’s length overhead is probably funnier than it should be, considering that he’s apparently Yuri’s friend.

He doesn’t usually attend events where he’s not involved—not that he’s averse to the idea, but it’d be a break from routine for him. Granted, everything about this competition trip since he picked up the bike yesterday has been a break from routine.

He is apparently taking too long to respond, because Yuri says, “Come on, come with me. Mila’s good, at least. I mean, she’s awful, but she’s good on the ice. And her program isn’t shitty. We can make fun of the others if they deserve it.”

“Okay,” he finds himself saying.

Halfway through the ladies’ short programs—Mila’s just finished hers, which was great, in spite or because of all of Yuri’s running commentary—Yuri grabs Otabek’s sleeve and shows him his phone screen. It displays a photo of a cat, the black-and-white patched one, in loaf position on a blue cushion, looking wide-eyed at the camera over an index card that says, in Russian, “Potya says ‘Good luck, Otabek!’”

“How—”

“I got Lilia’s housekeeper to catsit for her and she sends me pictures, and she went and did _this_ , on top of one for me—” he swipes back, and now the card says “Potya says ‘I miss you, Yuri! Skate good!’” “ _L_ ook at her, isn’t she _great_ —” Yuri is almost breathless.

Otabek can’t tell whether he’s talking about the housekeeper or the cat. “I am honored,” he says, which feels safe, if slightly ridiculous.

“You _are_ ,” Yuri says severely. “Potya is my _treasure_. Here, I’ll send it to you—oh, cool, Crispino’s up without her whiny brother brat—”

***

[December 13, 2014, 04:27 CET/08:27 ALMT]

**feruzaaa:** otash ur trending on skatefan twitter  
**feruzaaa:** they r freaking out bc u watched the ladies’ SPs with yuri plisetsky  
**feruzaaa:** there is allcaps  
**feruzaaa:** & ppl saying “squee”

[09:13 CET/13:13 ALMT]

**otabek_a:** I have no idea how to respond to this.  
**feruzaaa:** may i suggest “don’t”

***

Dec. 13, 20:58

**seung-gillee:** don’t fuck up.  
**otabek-altin:** or what?  
**seung-gillee:** [selfie, flipping off camera]  
**otabek-altin:** did you even take a new photo?  
**seung-gillee:** [selfie, flipping off camera, from different angle]

21:58

**otabek-altin:** hope that was sufficient.  
**seung-gillee:** 4CC will be fun.  
**otabek-altin:** it’s nearly 4AM in Seoul.  
**seung-gillee:** if you’re saying I need beauty sleep may I remind you of 2AM in Osaka.  
**otabek-altin:** ah, that time nothing happened.  
**seung-gillee:** [selfie, flipping off the camera, from third angle, filtered to hell]

***

[22:03 CET/December 14, 2014, 02:03 ALMT]

**feruzaaa:** YOU WERE BRILLIANT  
**feruzaaa:** WHAT WAS UR MUSIC??  
**otabek_a:** whiplash.  
**feruzaaa:** GOOD ONE  
**otabek_a:** since when would you know that?  
**feruzaaa:** SINCE IT GOT U SECOND TO A NEW WORLD RECORD

***

[December 14, 2014, 15:04 CET]

**yuri_plisetsky:** wtf @ ur 2A hwo did u f it up  
**otabek_a:** carefully.  
**yuri_plisetsky:** ??  
**otabek_a:** superstition thing.  
**yuri_plisetsky:** ok weirdo  
**yuri_plisetsky:** gl l8r  
**yuri_plisetsky:** dont let potya down

***

Otabek knows, the second JJ’s score is announced, that he’s not getting any new jewelry tonight. It’s just arithmetic: his program’s base score is too many dozens of points lower than JJ’s, and JJ recovered well enough that even his deductions are keeping him over 210.

He notes, in one corner of his mind, that he is glad for his own competition mindset, which descends as soon as he’s in costume and doesn’t lift until he steps off the ice. He goes blank and clean, all the shit in his head disappears somewhere, and there’s his music and his body and the ice and the way they work together to make something. The act of that making, the leadup to it and the creation itself, is consuming, absorbing, all of himself and entirely himself.

The tiny voice that remains buzzing between a few neurons mutters, _but all of you isn’t enough_.

He tells it to shut up so he can watch— _appreciate_ —Katsuki’s free skate. He outdoes himself, Otabek can tell long before his history-making score is up: Katsuki’s on the podium. Otabek is not.

_Which you knew after Rostelecom_ , mutters the voice.

This time, he shuts up the voice by hitting play on Damage, Inc.

After he’s off the ice—and he was _flawless_ on the ice; he knows it in his marrow—he takes a moment to shout “ _Davai!_ ” to Yuri, in exchange for yesterday. Yuri gives him a stone-faced thumbs-up, entirely out of character for his free-skate persona of, as Feruza had suggested, a rude little physics-defying djinn in neon flames.

He’s _not_ flawless; his expression shifts from superior to rage with no filter at all, and he outright falls on a jump, but hauls it together and hurls himself through the rest of it, including all six back-half jumps. He holds his final pose for one full second before he covers his face with his hands and sinks to his knees, shaking. He’s not as winded—Otabek briefly registers that _that_ much progress since Rostelecom may be slightly frightening—but this doesn’t look like physical distress. _Is he crying?_

In the K&C, Yuri’s dry-eyed but sulky, even when his win is announced. He pulls off a smile and a wave, but otherwise he looks like someone stole his lunch money.

Which is a cruel simile. He can’t help looking young.

But Otabek’s competition coolness is cracking; he feels a stab of—something unpleasant—as he notes that, apparently, a personal best at your first goddamn GPF, where you just took gold, at _fifteen_ , is something to sulk about.

And then Karim has one arm around Otabek’s shoulders, his own coat sleeve rustling against the nylon of Otabek’s Kazakhstan jacket, as they head back toward the gauntlet of reporters between them and the lockers and, past that, freedom. Karim is muttering continuously, which happens to him after competitions: “You nailed it, we know it, I’m fucking proud of you, you just got to power through the reporters. We’re going to work on strength and stamina and your repertoire, you’ve got the technique, you’re consistent, you’ve got style, you _nailed_ it, but this fucker with his fucking base score, I’m gonna drown him in maple syrup—”

Otabek catches about half of this. That stab in his gut—about Yuri, who is probably his friend—signaled the collapse of his performance high; his thoughts are racing from _never good enough_ to _middle of the pack_ to _curse of consistency_ to _who the fuck sulks about a gold,_ but mainly the number four sits at the front of his mind like it’s been tattooed on the insides of his eyelids.

And then the reporters descend. They’re orderly; they have to be; but there’s half a dozen of them and they’re all going to ask the same thing and dread slowly surfaces in him, dread and preemptive bone-deep exhaustion, on top of the typical post-skate aches.

“Okay, remember, I’m proud of you, you deserve to be proud of yourself, and you know all the answers already,” Karim murmurs. “We both do. Signal whenever.”

A rush of gratitude briefly overwhelms the litany of _good but not good enough._ He glances at his coach, wordless, but hoping he can convey that Karim is an anchor of solid gold. And maybe he manages, because Karim gives him a ghost of a smile and his grip on Otabek’s upper arm tightens, just for a moment.

The first brittle, overenunciated question laden with fake sympathy breaks through the general noise: “Otabek, how are you feeling, with your position yesterday and Jean-Jacques Leroy’s unprecedented recovery?” And there’s a microphone in his face.

The moment before he answers, when he inhales through his nose and exhales by mouth, is when he puts everything to rest for a moment or five. “I’m pleased with my own performance,” he says, and it sounds natural, loose and casual. It helps that he’s telling the truth. “For my first Grand Prix as a senior, I’m just proud to be here.” Okay, less true.

Another voice, another microphone. “Your performances were flawless. Were you surprised by Leroy’s turnaround tonight?”

“Skating is always a surprise.” He puts on his on-camera smile, where both sides of his mouth move.

“Your prospects for medaling were excellent this time last night. Where do you see yourself in a year?”

“With any luck, on that podium.” Self-deprecating half-chuckle, inviting them to laugh with him at his optimism. _But I’m not fucking joking_.

“How is the rest of your season looking? Anything you’re anticipating?”

He looks directly at this reporter, a blond woman with a pixie cut. “I’ll see you at Four Continents.” _Lee Seung-gil,_ he adds mentally. _You’re watching_.

Someone starts another question by butchering the name “Jean-Jacques” and Otabek is suddenly done. Beyond done. He lifts his left hand and scratches the back of his neck, avoiding elbowing Karim in the face by a hair.

And Karim moves in: “Otabek is just getting started,” he says, in a tone that carries. “For now, we’re focusing on 4CC and the road to Worlds. And that’s just this season.”

He’s so final about it that none of the reporters look for another comment as he bulldozes past them, marching in step with Otabek, who is still in his goddamn skates. “Proud of you,” he mutters again, once they’re clear of the press area. “Nailed it. Like everything else in the last, what, twenty-eight hours.”

_Except for medaling_.

_Fourth_.

There is something specifically excruciating about fourth place. There always is, even if he’s deserved it, if he’s two-footed or underrotated or outright fallen, but he is absolutely certain that every single element of his program was as clean as it possibly could have been. He was _there_ and nowhere else for it, throwing force and strength and fortitude and courage into every twitch of his muscles.

And it’s not enough. Because JJ has retired skater parent-coaches and four inches in height on him and sixteen years of training to Otabek’s eleven.

He is silent as he gets out of his skates and tends to his feet—not terrible, some blisters, a few minor bruises. Karim is quiet, too; he cleans Otabek’s skates while Otabek is occupied with Neosporin and bandages, as he swaps his costume for a black T-shirt and black jeans and thick socks, the kind with fluffy insides like slippers, as he pulls his boots on and ensures that the fabric of his jeans doesn’t get all fucked up inside the boot shafts. He stays quiet as Otabek hangs up his costume, zips it into its special garment bag, and drapes it over the locker room bench. Karim immediately scoops it up.

“I’ll take these back, put them with my gear,” says Karim. “Ice vacation ‘til we’re home.”

“Thank you,” replies Otabek, and it’s not for the break or for ferrying his performance crap, and Karim gets it. He turns back to his locker and takes out his biking jacket and bag. As he transfers his phone from his warmup jacket to his biker, it buzzes in his hand.

[21:57 CET]

**yuri_plisetsky:** hey u wanna kill leroy?

He looks at the text. His mind offers the image: Yuri, falling to his knees on the rink, face buried in his hands. For _what_ —

He puts the phone in his bag, instead of his jacket pocket. As he’s zipping the bag shut, without looking at Karim, he says, “Victory ceremony’s in three minutes.” His voice is perfectly neutral.

“Your set’s in ninety,” replies Karim, just as neutral. “Not including setup.”

“I forgot my headphones. And my laptop.”

Karim shakes his head slowly. “Just as I was starting to think you were getting grown.”

“I just can’t believe I forgot them.”

Abruptly, Karim drops the pantomime, and cuffs Otabek on the shoulder. “Get the fuck outta here,” he says roughly.

***

The walk to the hotel is four minutes. He’s too—whatever—to wait for an elevator; he runs up all eleven flights of stairs and tells his aching quads to get the fuck in line if they’re complaining. That’s another minute and a half. Then his good headphones are buried somewhere, despite not having _touched_ them since he unpacked four days ago, and it takes ten minutes for him to dig them out of the drawer with his sweatshirts, where they’d been hidden by a balled-up hoodie.

He shakes out the hoodie and gets a surprise; he hadn’t thought he’d packed it, because he’d confused it for one of his four other heathered grey sweatshirts. This one was his birthday present from Feruza. It’s got a funnel/cowl neckline that Feruza insists is cool and structural _and_ a good substitute for a scarf, since it covers his face nearly to the nose when it’s zipped right. He throws it on.

Something about this entire night is cursed, he thinks, aside from his own perfect goddamn skate and finding that hoodie, because his laptop is unplugged but powered on with a mere ten per cent battery when he flips it open. There’ll be outlets at the club, but his own stupid paranoia—he shoves the power cord into the outlet nearest his bed and flops down on the mattress with his earbuds in, blasting Ride the Lightning, because he is a farce. _Like your medaling aspirations._

He huffs out a breath, and says, “Fuck figure skating,” to his empty room between songs.

His body _hurts_.

When the laptop’s little indicator light goes green, he checks his hard drive, reviews his playlist—and savagely deletes the one titled “WINNER”—and puts the laptop in sleep mode before slotting it into his bag. Then headphones, then external hard drive, then cords and jacks, then a spare hoodie just in case. His notebook is already there. So’s his second notebook. So’s his reading book. His gloves are—

Where the fuck are his gloves.

It’s ten forty-eight by the time he leaves his room. Javier isn’t expecting him for another thirty minutes, and the ride is barely fifteen, so he’s fine purely from a logistical perspective, but he doesn’t want to _talk to anyone_ , and his chances of a clean getaway are dropping by the minute as people filter back from the awards ceremony.

Then, in quick succession, his stomach growls, so he stops at the floor’s vending machine alcove, and then he hears from somewhere behind him, “Ah, Altin.”

He wants to swear, or maybe kick something, but instead glances between the four vending machines. One, on the wall facing back up the hallway, has protein bars. Fine. Fine. Whatever. “Giacometti,” he replies.

“Going somewhere? You seem rushed.”

“Meeting a friend,” he says, feeding a euro note into the machine. It spits it back out. _Fuck_.

He apparently says this out loud, because Giacometti chuckles. He glances over and notes Giacometti’s wire-framed glasses, his olive-green overcoat, his plaid scarf, his sparkly-eyed _smirk,_ and looks back to grab his euro note so he can buy his stupid protein bar.

And Giacometti, stepping over to stand next to him, says knowingly, “ _Ah_. Lucky friend.”

This is, apparently, his limit. Otabek slams the heel of his hand against the machine as he whips his head to the right, meeting Giacometti’s eyes. “Quit,” he says as sharp new pain shoots up his wrist. “Drop the goddamn front.”

Giacometti stares, and then holds up his hands slowly, palms out. “I’m sorry,” he says, and his tone is—tired, if it’s anything. “Bad habit. I apologize.”

The vending machine spits out his euro again.

Before he can swear, or stop himself from swearing, or hit the vending machine again, Giacometti says, “Hang on.” He’s wearing a messenger bag over his neat overcoat, and he flips it open and pulls out—three protein bars. “Only have the chocolate-peanut butter, so if you’re allergic—”

“For real? You’re—”

“Take ‘em,” says Giacometti. “I’m going to get drunk.” He hands them over briskly, then snaps his messenger bag shut. “I’m sorry,” he says again. “I need a whack over the head every now and then. I’m sorry you had to deal it this time.”

Otabek blinks and tries to respond; he can’t, and settles for shaking out his left hand and shrugging. “It’s fine,” he says. And maybe it is? He doesn’t know; he checks the analog clock in the vending alcove and notes that he has thirty-three minutes left. “I have to—”

“Yeah,” says Giacometti. “See you.”

And without another breath of innuendo or a wink or a sparkle or _anything,_ he takes off for the stairs, the main ones by the elevator bank, head down and hands shoved in pockets.

What does _fifth_ feel like? For the guy who was _second_ at Worlds?

That jars him a bit, shakes some bits of his brain back into place, especially as he’s tearing into one of the bars while he descends the other staircase with the exit at the back of the lobby nearest the hotel’s restaurant. As he steps into the lobby, he pitches the protein bar wrapper into a bin. Now he just has to get to his bike and he’ll be free—

“Oi! Otabek! You goin’ out somewhere?”

He stops and breathes out hard through his nose. Apparently his brain reorganization does not include this particular person.

“Yeah,” he says to Yuri Plisetsky, newly minted gold medalist, who looks like he wants a fight. “Friend in town is doing a set. Figured I’d go.” He resumes walking toward the entrance to the parking garage.

“ _Seriously?_ ” Yuri is half-skipping to keep up. Okay, he wants a fight, or he wants to be somewhere loud. For some reason. His medal must not be singing the right song. Fine, that’s mean; graciousness only goes so far. “Lemme come!”

Otabek unclenches his teeth as he unclips his helmet from its lock. “Yuri.” He rolls his neck and feels his jaw pop. “How old are you now?”

He knows the answer, and he barely waits for Yuri to finish his sentence before he says, “Sorry. Can’t bring you.” He slings himself onto the bike seat and snaps the helmet closure.

Yuri stands at the door and yells something with the words “abandoning,” “messed up,” and, nearly howling over the bike’s engine, “ _You call yourself my friend?_ ”

Otabek revs the motor unnecessarily, unless it’s necessary to mask himself muttering, “Fuck’s _sake_ ,” and rides off.

***

Dec. 14, 23:17

**seung-gillee:** you did good.  
**otabek-altin:** in the words of someone I know: fuck you. I lost.  
**seung-gillee:** someone has to.  
**otabek-altin:** …not helping.  
**seung-gillee:** good thing I’m not trying to help, then.

He wonders vaguely if he will ever have a normal conversation with Lee as he locks up the bike and heads into the club. It’s a two-story space with an unfinished ceiling, a bar at the back, and the DJ booth raised eight feet off the floor, paneled with metal grids laid flat against black-painted wood. Javier appears at the bouncer’s elbow just as Otabek is showing his ID. “Elder Altin!” he says cheerfully. “Castello, this is our next act. You get a blue wristband because you’re special,” he tells Otabek. “How’d you do?”

“Fourth.” It’s the first time he’s said it out loud. “The half that makes the top half possible.” He sounds, for once, exactly like he feels: bitter, cutting, self-loathing.

“Drink?” says Javier.

He sighs. “I shouldn’t. Water?”

Javier yells at one of the bartenders and secures a glass and a sealed gallon jug of water before they go up into the booth. Everything’s as he expected; there isn’t much variation in club booths, which is nice. The DJ on right now is a woman with green hair who nods at Otabek and points to the space next to her on the other side of the mixer panel. There’s extras of everything—outlets, jacks, space to put his laptop, space to put his hard drive, and he gets it all set out in about a minute and a half. He queues his own playlist and notes and flashes her a thumbs-up.

She leans toward him and says into his ear, to avoid yelling, “Thirty seconds left. Start whenever.”

Her last track’s outro is chill—indie alt-rock with strong vocals, a calm fadeout—and he beat-matches it easily, loops the first sixteen beats at low volume until the last of the green-haired girl’s song’s echoes have faded. Then he eases the tempo and the volume up, before the vocals of his first track kick in.

_—this is the first day of my last fall—_

Volume up again. The first riff, which isn’t a riff so much as an aural assault, smashes into the auditory space formed by the chillout of the other DJ’s last track and the stealthy opening of his first one.

Tonal whiplash.

It’s perfect.

The other DJ nods and packs up her own stuff; in a minute, she’s gone.

Otabek lets out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding. He likes playing for clubs, tweaking the mood as he wishes, riding the crowd’s high. His set list for tonight might be angry, the first chunk being a bunch of bitter fuck-you industrial and hard rock, but it’s high-energy, and the club—full of twenty- and thirtysomethings, wearing mostly black with flashes of spikes and piercings and extraneous buckles glinting in the moving spotlights—seems to like it.

Half an hour into his set, he’s got a track where the vocalist starts _yelling_ , just a full-voiced wordless roar, on a downbeat and then sustains it for twenty seconds, as the guitar line thrashes around and the drums crash. Leaning with his elbows on the ledge where his laptop sits, Otabek puts his head down between his arms and yells as well, inaudible beneath the club’s speakers, but as his lungs empty he feels the ball of twisted disappointment in his stomach start to loosen.

When he straightens, he almost smiles. Hell, it’s skating. He can’t stay mad at it. Sure, it sucks sometimes, and fourth place sucks _always_ , but being fourth tonight was math, really, it was just math and actual human limitation, and it also doesn’t mean he’s going to stay there.

Being first tonight doesn’t mean Yuri’s going to stay _there_ , either. And, strictly speaking, he _wasn’t_ first _tonight_. Katsuki’s FS broke a record set by his own legend of a coach; Yuri’s barely broke 200. Which isn’t anything to turn up one’s nose at, but if Yuri is so used to winning by miles, being only a tenth of a point above silver probably feels like the end of the world.

Maybe it’ll be good for him.

On the other hand, things that are good for you often suck, and maybe Otabek shouldn’t have been a jerk.

He wonders how pissed Yuri is.

But that’s a question for later. He looks around the club; the mood of his set changes after the track with the yell, and he wants to see how the crowd is responding to noise-pop as a segue to weirder stuff. They seem happy with it—everyone’s still dancing, with a growing pack of moshers in the middle of the floor. There are still people standing along the walls, individuals and small groups, but that’s typical—

He blinks.

It is _not_ typical for one of the people along the walls to be Yuri Plisetsky, two years and four months away from legally entering this room, wearing his new stretch vinyl leggings and that satiny blazer and the excuse of a tank top, hair half-pulled back, lights gleaming off sunglasses and the stupid hideous crucifix necklace, which does, in fact, make him look like gangster club trash.

Completely the wrong vibe for a rock club.

He’s leaning against the wall with his arms folded, face blank—until he pulls his sunglasses ( _sunglasses_ , in a fucking club, after midnight) down his nose and grins like a shark up at Otabek.

Well, he doesn’t _look_ like he’s pissed.

He steps away from the wall, closer to the people dancing, and spins, shrugging the blazer off his skinny shoulders and then back up, like he’s showing off on a catwalk, and then points a finger-gun at him, all but saying _your turn now_.

The track after the noise pop one is an unreleased single by an unsigned metal band whose bassist knows a session drummer who used to date one of Otabek’s friends in Detroit. As the first power chord sounds, he returns Yuri’s finger gun and pulls the fake trigger.

Yuri promptly loses his mind, or something. Otabek shakes his head and looks around again; the rest of the club is pleased with the song, too. He’ll have to tell Julianne.

“ _Otabek!_ ”

He looks down. Yuri stands at the base of the booth, hands on the gridded paneling at the front, and—he fucking scales it like he’s a six-year-old on a jungle gym, yelling, “ _I want to skate to this song for my exhibition!_ ”

“What,” Otabek says, as a dubstep remix of an ‘80s Metallica single starts. He has to fuck with the equalizer settings, they’re all out of whack for this, but first he has to deal with Yuri fucking gold-medalist Plisetsky, who is now perched on the edge of the booth’s half-wall like a weird little bird of prey, and Javier and the bouncer are both making their way over at speed—

He reaches over the mixer panel and grabs Yuri by the waist. “Keep your feet up,” he says, lifts him—easily, about as difficult as shifting his parents’ cat when she’s feeling complacent—over the panel, and deposits him in the corner of the booth opposite the stairs. “Sit,” he orders. Yuri does, and shark-grins up at him. “What the fuck.”

“I _love_ that _song_ —”

Javier and the bouncer appear. Before Javier can say anything, Otabek holds up both hands. “Apologies,” he says first. “This is Yuri. I vouch for him. He’s staying here ’til my set’s done.”

“Yup,” says Yuri, and then looks at the bouncer and smirks. He probably fucking bribed the guy.

Javier shakes his head. “If you say he’s good—”

“He’s fine.”

“Your call.”

Javier heads back down the stairs and the bouncer follows, after making a shadow of a _zip it_ gesture over his lips. Yuri says immediately, “What was that song?”

“Jesus fuck,” Otabek says, looking up at the ceiling.

“That’s not a good title. Can I skate to it? I wanna skate to it.”

“What are you _talking_ about—no, not now, tell me later.” He grabs his phone and finds the track that made Yuri go crazy. He plugs his own earbuds into the phone’s jack and hands it to Yuri. “Here. You sit, you don’t move, you don’t touch shit.”

“Sure,” Yuri replies pleasantly, puts in the earbuds, and hits play.

***

[December 15, 2014, 00:34 CET, sent from Otabek’s laptop]

**otabek_a:** karim, if anyone’s been asking, yuri plisetsky is with me and everything’s fine.  
**k_sarper:** Really now.  
**otabek_a:** yeah, surprise to me too. but it’s fine, everything’s good.  
**k_sarper:** I’ll tell Feltsman. Thanks for the text.

After the next DJ—a six-and-a-half-foot-tall guy with braids who bumps his knuckles against Otabek’s—takes over, Otabek unplugs his own setup, messages Karim from his laptop, and packs everything back into his bag. He slings it over his shoulder and taps Yuri’s shin with his foot to get his attention. “Yuri, we’re leaving.”

Yuri gets up, apparently still listening to that track on repeat based on the single glance Otabek gets at his own phone screen, and follows him silently out of the booth. Otabek finds Javier—which isn’t difficult; he’s right at the bottom of the steps—and says, “Hey.”

“What’s with this one?” Javier says, jerking his chin at Yuri.

“A surprise. Sorry. He got overexcited.” He glances over; Yuri isn’t even paying attention. He’s holding Otabek’s phone, brow furrowed as he mouths something. “Gold medal in the final—I think it went to his head.” In some weird way involving bribery and genre-blind club clothes. “Anyway, the bike—it’s outside, I’m going to be dealing with competition crap ’til I leave, can I just—” He offers the keyring.

Javier takes it. “That’s simplest, yeah. Glad the kid wasn’t a bother. Or, I don’t know, a murderer.” He looks at Yuri, who is still mouthing things and now making little gestures with his hands. “Is he…okay?”

“He’s just like this, I think,” says Otabek. He is possibly taking advantage of Yuri’s reverie a little too much. “Thanks for letting me play here. And for the bike.”

“Any time you’re in town, man. See you.”

Outside the club, he has to physically remove one of the earbuds before he can get Yuri’s attention. When he does, Yuri starts and stumbles, then glares at him. “What,” he says grumpily, and snatches the earbud back.

“Would you like to tell me what you’re doing?” says Otabek. If there were a medal for personal restraint in the face of overly talented phone thieves with poor impulse control, he would’ve just won gold.

“Let’s go to the beach,” says Yuri, which is another gold medal in the Olympic event of avoiding the goddamn question. “If we go straight down this street—” he waves, already backing up—“we’ll end up on the beach.”

“It’s past midnight.”

Yuri shrugs.

“And December.”

He puts the left earbud back in, turns, and starts walking up the street, still carrying Otabek’s phone.

Otabek considers. He could probably—no, he could _easily_ —just tackle Yuri and sit on him while he calls a cab, which would also get him his phone back, but that would involve possible injury to one or both of them. And he is _not_ giving up 4CC because Yuri is having a weird prima donna fit.

He’s also, in spite of himself, curious about what the fuck is going on in Yuri’s head.

He heaves a sigh and follows.

***

The beach is, as expected, entirely deserted. There are a few streetlamps, so at least it isn’t pitch-dark, but Yuri has barely taken a seat on a concrete bench and taken out the earbuds before he starts shivering. “It’s cold,” he says.

“I’ll trade you my spare sweatshirt for my phone. Please.”

Yuri startles. “Oh, shit, I forgot—”

The hoodie is a men’s medium and Yuri nearly gets lost in it, but he seems fine with this; he bunches his hands up inside the sleeve cuffs and hugs his arms around his knees. He sits and stares at the pebbly sand.

Otabek takes a moment for quiet sand-staring himself before he says, “So what is this about? Your exhibition—”

“Yeah.” And, quietly, “Sorry.” And then Yuri begins to explain: his exhibition skate, the one he’s been doing all season, is another Lilia-choreographed balletic thing that plays off the angelic/demonic dynamic of his SP versus free skate, but it feels like it’s just the same shit arranged differently and that whole ballet-based _thing_ is just one of Lilia’s branding mechanisms for the product that is Yuri Plisetsky.

And Yuri is, it turns out, deeply upset with his free skate. He suspects that if he’d had the run of things, or just a few things, from the beginning, if he’d had any creative input that wasn’t squelched by Nikiforov’s challenge of a short program and his coaches’ vision for their prodigy, he’d have been able to give his heart to his skates this season. He wouldn’t have been fighting them the entire way. Sure, everything had finally clicked for his short, but the free—and the gala tomorrow, and the way his exhibition program is so tightly linked to his free skate, and how all of it has Lilia’s fingerprints all over it…

“And so I guess…” He sighs. “So I…just wanted to get your advice about it.” Yuri burrows into the hood of the sweatshirt. His face is set, eyes level under furrowed eyebrows and mouth curved into a tiny frown. “That’s all.”

Otabek finds himself surprised, yet again, at their similarity. His rebellion had been staged differently and earlier in his career, but since that point, his skating has always been driven by his ideas, his vision. He’s not a Nikiforov conjuring entire seasons down to the wardrobe out of thin air; he needs help with the details, but he determines what he wants to convey with himself on the ice, and he’s been lucky enough to have his coaches and the Kazakh press and his sister saying _yes, good, you decide, what you want is important, so do it._

That’s the foremost reason he can, having worn out his own tantrum, feel like fourth at the GPF is okay: he knows he skated the best he personally could, because he’s known in his soul that his programs have fit him like his own skin from the beginning.

And now Yuri wants to slap together an exhibition skate for music he first heard an hour ago, because he knows that he won’t be able to give anything like his best if he’s working within someone else’s idea of what he should be.

And he’s asking Otabek to tell him he’s allowed.

Otabek swallows all of that and says instead, “All right. If we’re gonna do this, it’s gonna be goddamn good.”

Five minutes later, he remembers, and interrupts Yuri’s gesticulating to say, “Did I let down your cat?”

“No,” Yuri replies instantly. “Potya’s your number-one fan. She loves your triple axel. I was thinking a step sequence here, maybe, like—”

***

[05:17 CET, Barcelona, Spain/09:17 ALMT, Almaty, Kazakhstan]

**otabek_a:** favorite sister  
**otabek_a:** I just helped GPF gold medalist yuri plisetsky overhaul his entire exhibition program from scratch  
**otabek_a:** because he wanted my specific opinion.  
**otabek_a:** I’m not good at this stuff but I’m pretty sure I made a friend.  
**feruzaaa:**!!!  
**otabek_a:** find a livestream or something for the gala. I am going to bed.

***

[14:36 CET/18:36 ALMT]

**feruzaaa:** DID UR OVERHAUL OF YURI PLISETSKY’S EXHIBITION SKATE INCLUDE TAKING HIS GLOVES OFF W UR TEETH  
**otabek_a:** that was improvised.  
**feruzaaa:** YOU BLEW UP TWITTER AGAIN  
**otabek_a:** uh. oops.  
**feruzaaa:** THIS IS THE BEST DAY OF MY LIFE

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading, commenting, and your patience with my thing for Metallica, which became Otabek's thing for Metallica.

**Author's Note:**

> Feruza calls her brother "Otash" sometimes, following one method for shortening Kazakh names. thanks for reading!


End file.
